Normally about now I’d be reminding everyone to hurry up and get their entries in for the Stream of Consciousness Saturday badge contest before the deadline. But there’s no need! Ten bloggers were so quick this year, I had to cut off the contest early.
If you’d like to go and have a look at all the lovely badges, here’s the link to the post: you’ll find the individual links in the comment section. I cleaned it up a bit so there’s only one of each.
I’ll write a post with links to them all on Thursday, along with a poll so everyone can vote on their favourite.
Thanks to all the contestants for your awesome badges! Best of luck to all!
After much deliberation, I’ve decided to hold the Stream of Consciousness Saturday Badge Contest for the fourth year in a row. Our current badge by John Holton may be up for the vote again this year,
John Holton 2016-2017
or he may decide to grace us with another design. We shall see!
I’ll be taking entries for the next nine days (today included) for Stream of Consciousness Saturday badge designs.
I’ve added a few things to the guidelines this year, so make sure you read them carefully before entering:
1. The design can be anything you want it to be, but it must include either “Stream of Consciousness Saturday” or “SoCS” and your name and/or the name of your website.
2. Any pictures (art or photo) must be your own.
3. All entries will be posted here on my blog on Thursday August 17th, 2017, along with a poll that will close the next day, on Friday the 18th. I would ask that each of the entrants make a blog post on their own website with their artwork so that I can post links for voters to check them out, and that they link their post back HERE in the comment section no later than Wednesday August 16th, midnight EDT (GMT -5 hours). No entry posted after that time will qualify. All links included here within the specified timeframe will be added to the voting list.
4. The winner’s badge will be available for anyone who participates in Stream of Consciousness Saturday to post permanently on their website as a widget and/or to embed in each weekly SoCS post.
5. One entry per person. The contest is open to anyone with an active blog, WordPress or otherwise (see #3 for entry requirements). I reserve the right to disqualify any blogger from the contest who regularly posts material that may be offensive to others, i.e. porn, highly political posts, or blogs that only exist to sell something.
6. Poll results will not be available while the poll is open. If there is a tie, I will choose the winner myself.
7. Entries are restricted to the first ten linked below (just in case we’re bombarded), so get yours in early.
8. If I’ve missed anything, or if you have any questions, please ask in the comment section below.
9. Have fun and best of luck!
Note: The posting of the winning badge with a SoCS post/on a participant’s website will not be a requirement. It’s purely for entertainment/recognition purposes.
Changes are hard, aren’t they? First you’ve got to deal with the difficult decision to make changes (assuming you’re in control of them – not being in control is a totally different beast), and then there’s actually going through with them. So I’m here with a little smidgen of a rant, and a bit of a request for opinions on my proposed changes to this blog.
Actually, the changes will be to both of my blogs. I’m trying to figure out how to make my fiction blog look more like an author blog. In doing this, I feel the need to remove the fiction from it that’s not in line with the books I write. So I’ll keep the romance, the horror, the poetry, and some of the humorous stuff, but I’m considering moving things like my Second Seat on the Right series over here and rerunning it for 365 days like I did the first time. Despite the fact that I’ve written 960 pieces of fiction and poetry over there in three years, I’ve had 10 times fewer views than I have here on lindaghill.com with a total so far of 1,675 posts, this one included. All this to say, expect some daily fiction here starting in September. Some of you may have read it before, but it’s been a while. What do you say? Are you up for some funny short fiction?
The second change I’m thinking about is a harder one. It’s to do with the Stream of Consciousness Saturday badge. You see, I change it every year, but this is the first time that the creator of our current badge is still around. Every other time I’ve had to retire a badge, I’ve done it with the knowledge that I wasn’t removing a possible point of exposure to an active blogger. Here are our past badges:
Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions 2014-2015
Just a quick reminder that the contest for our new Stream of Consciousness Saturday badge closes tomorrow at midnight, my time (Toronto, Canada, GMT -5). We’ve got some great badges already, which you can find the links for in the comment section here: https://lindaghill.com/2016/08/04/its-the-3rd-annual-socs-badge-design-contest/ I’ll post direct links to all of them in Thursday’s post, when I’ll ask you to vote for your favourite.
The good new is, we still have three spots open for new entries! The next three contestants to link their posts featuring their artwork according to the rules in the above-mentioned post, will be entered into the contest with the other 7 contestants. You have just under 26 hours from the time this post goes live.
It’s that time of year again – time for the Stream of Consciousness Saturday Badge Contest! A year ago this month we voted on this beautiful badge:
to represent us every week. I made the difficult decision to have an annual contest two years ago, when the great Doobster left us. Here is his badge:
Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions
And now, it seems we’ve lost another badge-maker. Yes, our lovely friend at Hope Floats has made her website private. But fear not! She’s alive and well. I texted her a few days ago to make sure. Hopefully we’ll get together soon for coffee and I’ll find out if she’s planning to return to blogland.
So we move forward once again. Last year’s badge is going to be a tough one to beat, but I have confidence in all of you to come up with something spectacular! Here we go:
I’ll be taking entries for the next seven days (today included) for Stream of Consciousness Saturday badge designs. Here are the guidelines:
1. The design can be anything you want it to be but it must include either “Stream of Consciousness Saturday” or “SoCS” and your name and/or the name of your website.
2. Any pictures (art or photo) must be your own.
3. All entries will be posted here on my blog on Thursday August 11th, 2016, along with a poll that will close the next day, on Friday the 12th. I would ask that each of the entrants make a blog post on their own website with their artwork so that I can post links for voters to check them out, and that they link their post back HERE in the comment section no later than Wednesday August 10th, midnight EDT (GMT -5 hours). All links included here will be added to the voting list.
4. The winner’s badge will be available for anyone who participates in Stream of Consciousness Saturday to post permanently on their website as a widget and/or to embed in each weekly SoCS post.
5. One entry per person. The contest is open to anyone with a blog, WordPress or otherwise (see #3 for entry requirements).
6. Poll results will not be available while the poll is open. If there is a tie, I will choose the winner myself.
7. This year I am restricting the entries to the first ten linked below (just in case we’re bombarded), so get yours in early.
8. If I’ve missed anything, or if you have any questions, please ask in the comment section below.
9. Have fun!
Note: The posting of the winning badge with a SoCS post/on a participant’s website will not be a requirement. It’s purely for entertainment/recognition purposes.
You, the voters, have chosen our new Stream of Consciousness Saturday badge! For a while there it looked like I would have to make the final decision, but I was spared by a hair.
First, as promised (and so the winner’s badge doesn’t show up in the reader) here is the badge we have dutifully used for the past year. Since Doobster has departed for what I imagine are greener pastures and fresher air, I thought it would be a nice tribute to give everyone the opportunity to remember him with this:
As I said, it was very close. There was only one vote between each of the top three:
In first was: My Leaky Boat with “Flowers,”
followed by Nearly Wes with “Sun Rays.”
In third was Owl Wonder with “Splash”
and then in close fourth was Irene Design with “Gems”
and bringing up the most honourable last place was Ever Changing with “Waterfall.”
Congratulations to all the entrants for a job well done and thank you to everyone who voted!
It’s after midnight and all the entries are in for the new Stream of Consciousness Saturday badge contest. We have five fantastic badges to choose from! Anyone can vote: make yours count!
I’ll name them all to make it easier for voting purposes. Here are the contestants in order according to their entries:
Because I just know everyone out there in WordPressLand is interested in my to-do list for the next week, I’m posting it publicly. You see, I have a partial week off. Which means the kids are with their dad for a week, but I still have to drive my mother here and there, and I still have my basement troll (aka my eldest son) and his cats dwelling in my dungeon. During this time I hope to accomplish the following:
Finish editing my novel.
Write the remainder of my Second Seat series for my fiction blog – only 21 days left to go and I’ll have published one entry every day for an entire year!
Annihilate all of the fruit flies in my house, if not the world.
Pitch an article to at least three different publications for my Interview with a Magician. (Yes, I italicized it to make it look as awesome as it’s gonna be.)
Write some fiction, poetry, and articles to sell, to raise money for my upcoming trip to Tokyo!! (Yes, I’m going again in November. The tickets are booked because I won the lottery to get the concert tickets I wanted!!!!!)
(And this may be the hardest of all,) get away from the computer and get some exercise.
(And this may be the hardest thing to avoid, but I have to be realistic,) procrastinate.
Remind everyone that there’s a contest going on for which we have one (fantastic) entry so far. It’s for the new SoCS badge in case you missed the memo. Don’t make me break out the pom-poms. And for pity’s sake don’t make me enter it myself. You’ll rue the day you have to look at any more of my mad paint skillz.
So there you have it, WordPressLand. Can I do it? I think I can. Wish me luck.
It was a year ago tomorrow that I announced the Saturday Stream of Consciousness Badge Contest, and a year ago next week that we voted on this beautiful badge
Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions
to represent us every week. The decision to make this an annual contest was a tough one. Many of us miss Doobster and using his badge seems a great way to remember him. What I’d like to propose is, anyone who has attached this amazing work of art to one of their posts might attach it as a widget to his or her page. Sometime in the next week I’ll endeavour to put a date on it for that purpose.
So, that out of the way, let’s move on!
I’ll be taking entries for the next seven days (today included) for Stream of Consciousness Saturday badge designs. Here are the guidelines:
1. The design can be anything you want it to be but it must include either “Stream of Consciousness Saturday” or “SoCS” and your name and/or the name of your website.
2. Any pictures (art or photo–it doesn’t have to be crayon) must be your own.
3. All entries will be posted here on my blog on Thursday August 13th, 2015, along with a poll that will close the next day, on Friday the 14th. I would ask that each of the entrants make a blog post on their own website with their artwork so that I can post links for voters to check them out, and that they link their post back HERE in the comment section no later than Wednesday August 12th. All links included here will be added to the voting list.
4. The winner’s badge will be available for anyone who participates in Stream of Consciousness Saturday to post permanently on their website as a widget and/or to embed in each weekly SoCS post.
5. One entry per person. The contest is open to anyone with a blog, WordPress or otherwise (see #3 for entry requirements).
6, Poll results will not be available while the poll is open. If there is a tie, I will choose the winner myself.
7. If I’ve missed anything, or if you have any questions please ask in the comment section below.
8. Have fun!
Note: The posting of the winning badge with a SoCS post/on a participant’s website will not be a requirement. It’s purely for entertainment/recognition purposes.
I’ve been receiving a lot of positive feedback for SoCS in regards to it not only being fun to participate in, but also for the new connections that are being made between bloggers. However, without advertising it on HarsH ReaLiTy, the word doesn’t seem to be getting out that fast. And after all, the more new bloggers participate, the more new bloggers we have the chance to meet and follow and have follow us.
In light of this fact, I’ve decided to set up some goals:
1. Write a blog post (probably close to or on Friday this week) and ask people to reblog or copy and paste to hopefully encourage each of our “outer circles” to join in.
2. Set up a contest for the design of a new SoCS badge that we can all display on our blogs and/or display in our weekly posts. The winner will of course have their badge on display with their website name on the badge for all to see. Judging will be made public.
3. EVENTUALLY, when and if SoCS gets big enough, set up its own WordPress site and invite other bloggers to come and set up the week’s prompt and watch over the proceedings.
If you can think of ways to promote SoCS, please let me know in the comments. The more, the merrier!
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