You know that feeling when you’re trying to come up with something to write before a 2am deadline but you just can’t think of a damned thing and just the trying feels like this?
Anyone who would like to try it out, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” title in your post, and if you do, you can ping back here to help your blog get more exposure. To execute a ping back, just copy the URL in the address bar on this post and paste it somewhere in the body of your post. Your link will show up in the comments below. Please ensure that the One-Liner Wednesday you’re pinging back to is this week’s! Otherwise, no one will likely see it but me.
As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS), if you see a ping back from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.
Unlike SoCS, this is not a prompt so there’s no need to stick to the same “theme.”
The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:
That would be Missing In Action, and the reason is also what is behind my exciting news. A friend, who is also an avid reader and a respected author and reviewer of fiction has accepted my request to read my manuscript. I’ve asked her to give me a no-holds-barred opinion on whether or not my novel needs a professional editor. Yes, I know how many authors and editors insist that every novel MUST HAVE an editor, but seriously… My novel is 750 pages long. I’m looking at paying more money than I can probably ever hope to get back. So this is my last-ditch attempt to really see what’s up with my grammar.
So why have I not been around? I’m concentrating on getting this baby as good as it’s going to get before I give it up. And then, it’s either going to an editor or not because come hell or high water, it’s getting published this year. Why is it going to be published this year? Because I told my muse in a letter that it would. And that’s what it all comes down to.
That’s right.
Not that I’m delusional enough to believe that even on the off-chance he read my letter he would remember it ten minutes later, let alone remember I’m writing a character with his sense of fashion, his stage presence and his face, he’s damned well going to (potentially if it gets to him) receive a copy of my novel in the mail, complete with his name in the acknowledgements! So there! (Disclaimer: The preceding run-on sentence is not, by any stretch of the imagination, an example of the grammar in my novel.)
Anyway, that’s what I’ve been doing and what I’ll be doing for the next week or so. But I haven’t forgotten about you! I realize I’m terribly behind in my reading and replying to comments. I’ll be going back a couple of weeks to get to them, so if you get a reply to a comment you’ve forgotten you left, don’t be surprised. In the meantime I’m going to try to post every day on my fiction blog, plus blog about my trip to Japan here, and, (of course) keep up the weekly prompts. In other words, I won’t be as busy as I was last month. 🙄
We did it! Just Jot It January 2016 was an unprecedented success and I owe it all to everyone who participated. It was wonderful meeting and getting to know some great bloggers who I hope to keep up with from now on and I enjoyed reading all the posts (so far – if I haven’t read your post, I’ll certainly try). The daily prompts were loads of fun, as was the opportunity to link to different blogs, though maybe I’ll do that a little differently next year. I’m thinking about holding the “competition” once a week so more people have the chance to get their prompt in, particularly those who start later in the month.
Based on this year’s excellent turnout, I may ask for help next year. I’m not sure exactly what “help” will entail yet; if anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. Perhaps I’ll do guest bloggers.
So this is it! Congratulations to those who linked every day in January, and thanks to all, whether you participated 31 times or once.
I admit to feeling clumsy in the way I go about organizing these prompts of mine. The pingbacks mixed in with the comments are haphazard and I can imagine they’re more difficult to find than they should be. So hopefully sometime within the next month I’ll have time to search for a better way of doing things. It would be awesome if I could set up my page like they do at the Daily Post – I like that idea better than having an offsite compilation with someone like Linky Tools or Mr. Linky. I have what is probably an irrational fear of leaving my email address on a site I don’t know. Anyway, I’ll start with the Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt and go from there.
Speaking of clumsy, I’m also thinking about getting a real artist to design a new JusJoJan badge for next year. I’m starting to realize that maybe my mad Paint skillz aren’t up to snuff. And I’m getting tired of looking at the stick-figure blogger with a burning screen. If enough people insist, maybe I’ll give you all a choice when January 2017 rolls around to use the new one or keep the retro one.
Ha! Whoever thought I’d ever make it to “retro”? Not me.
The “Clumsy” prompt is brought to you by Judy at Edwina’s Episodes. Please head on over and have a read, and tell her I said hi!
To find the rules for Just Jot It January, click here and join in today. It’s never too late! And don’t forget to ping back your January 31st post here!
What if all the answers to all the questions in the world were given to us? Wouldn’t life be boring? There would be no disease, no questioning why we exist. Would there be no war? I imagine there would be no need for it, since we’d know how to sustain our peoples, our boundaries, grow all the food we’d need… and still I think life would be chaotic.
People would be so bored they would defy the logical answers. Like, what if I jump off this cliff with a bungee cord wrapped around my throat? Okay, bad example. How about, what if I jump off this cliff without first measuring my bungee cord? There is already no end to the number of risk-takers in this world. Nor is there a measurable number of stupid people. You just have to watch AFV to see a handful every week.
Having all the answers, I can only therefore deduce, would not limit the number of deaths in the world. It would only kill off the stupid people. That’s my final answer.
And how about anticipation? If we had the answer to every question in the world, we’d know how everything was going to turn out. It’d be like having precognition. (Except for the stupid people, because they’d just ignore it.) Having precognition would end hope. The end of hope would be the end of happiness.
So there you have it. If we had all the answers we’d be a population of smart, (because all the stupid people popped off after doing something stupid) miserable, yet safe and healthy people with nothing to look forward to.
Think of that next time you wish you knew the answer.
The “An-” prompt is brought to you by Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Click here to join in, and leave your link for everyone to see!
To find the rules for Just Jot It January, click here. Join in today! It’s never too late! And don’t forget to ping back your January 23rd post here at this post.
Note: If you combine SoCS and JusJoJan in one post, make sure you ping back to both this post and the Friday Reminder post.
Welcome! It’s Friday, and at Life in progress that means it’s time for the Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt! Tomorrow is a special day for me here at WordPress – it’s my third unofficial WP anniversary, so I’ve decided to let the prompt reflect that in my usual roundabout way. The SoCS prompt will also be tomorrow’s Just Jot It January prompt word (if you can call it a word… I suppose you can), so if you want to use it for your JusJoJan post, go right ahead, and if you want to combine the two challenges you can do that too! On with the prompt:
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “an-” Use it as a word or find a word that starts with the letters “an” and make it your post’s theme. Have fun!
After you’ve written your Saturday post tomorrow, please link it here at this week’s prompt page and check to make sure it’s here in the comments so others can find it and see your awesome Stream of Consciousness post. Anyone can join in!
To make your post more visible, use the SoCS badge! Just paste it in your Saturday post so people browsing the reader will immediately know your post is stream of consciousness and/or pin it as a widget to your site to show you’re a participant. Wear it with pride!!
Here are the rules:
1. Your post must be stream of consciousness writing, meaning no editing, (typos can be fixed) and minimal planning on what you’re going to write.
2. Your post can be as long or as short as you want it to be. One sentence – one thousand words. Fact, fiction, poetry – it doesn’t matter. Just let the words carry you along until you’re ready to stop.
3. There will be a prompt every week. I will post the prompt here on my blog on Friday, along with a reminder for you to join in. The prompt will be one random thing, but it will not be a subject. For instance, I will not say “Write about dogs”; the prompt will be more like, “Make your first sentence a question,” “Begin with the word ‘The’,” or simply a single word to get your started.
4. Ping back! It’s important, so that I and other people can come and read your post! For example, in your post you can write “This post is part of SoCS:” and then copy and paste the URL found in your address bar at the top of this post into yours. Your link will show up in my comments for everyone to see. The most recent pingbacks will be found at the top.
5. Read at least one other person’s blog who has linked back their post. Even better, read everyone’s! If you’re the first person to link back, you can check back later, or go to the previous week, by following my category, “Stream of Consciousness Saturday,” which you’ll find right below the “Like” button on my post.
6. Copy and paste the rules (if you’d like to) in your post. The more people who join in, the more new bloggers you’ll meet and the bigger your community will get!
7. As a suggestion, tag your post “SoCS” and/or “#SoCS” for more exposure and more views.
Mendaciloquent. Yes, you read it right. Or did you? It seems to be one of those words that can only be found in places like the Grandiloquent Dictionary. The closest Merriam-Webster and Oxford come to it is mendacious. According to my trusty thesaurus, mendacious is synonymous with deceitful, fraudulent, and untrustworthy, among others. From what I can gather, mendaciloquent means all that, but to the nth degree. Perhaps it’s lying with eloquence.
I was amused in a wry sort of way that a few mentions of politics came up on the first page of my Google search for the word of the day. I could talk about how much I love The Donald, (that’s sarcasm … or is it mendaciloquence? I’m not sure anymore) but you wouldn’t be able to shut me up for days. And then I’d be told to, “go back to Canada!”, to which I’d reply, “I never left!” and then a wall would go up and it would be a complete mess, so I won’t talk about liars in politics.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it ’til I die – I don’t see the point in lying just for the sake of lying. Or for the sake of making oneself look better in someone else’s eyes. The truth always comes out eventually. Even fiction, no matter what the story, no matter how outrageous it may be, has its own truth.
The problem arises when people can’t discern the difference between fiction and dishonesty. There are people out there who build their entire lives around a fiction. They survive by it; then it’s devastating for them when reality seeps in.
The truth is now I need to go to bed. That ain’t no mendaciloquence.
The “Mendaciloquent” prompt is brought to you by Coralee at Musefully Mendaciloquent. If you don’t already know her, click on the link and check out her blog!
To find the rules for Just Jot It January, click here and join in today. It’s never too late! And don’t forget to ping back your January 27th post here! If you’d like to combine this with One-Liner Wednesday (which will be posted several hours after this), have at it! Just be sure to link back to both prompts.
The letter “f” isn’t working in the comments when it comes before an “i” or an “l” unless it’s typed in upper case. I spent ive minutes trying to igure out why I couldn’t spell the word “find” last night. What the uck?
So hard to believe, but there’s only a week to go ’til the last day of January. Then after a slightly elongated February we’ll be looking forward to spring, and looking to the weatherman to find out if we’ll have an early one or a late one. I think for many of us in North America, our mild December has made this month (or at least the winter so far) seem much shorter, don’t you?
The fact that there’s only a week left of January means we’re almost finished Just Jot It January too! If you’ve made it this far without missing a post, congratulations! If you’ve at least written a name and number down on a post-it note, good for you! You’ve jotted something every day. 😀
But we can’t stop here. We’ve got to keep going! Whether you’re compelled by the enjoyment of jotting out a post every day, or you’re simply on a roll and the momentum is carrying you, it doesn’t matter. JusJoJan is an exercise to remind ourselves that we can write something every day. We’re all writers after all, every one of us who has a blog. And yes, I’m talking to those who have art and photo blogs too – the titles and tags have got to come from somewhere, right?
So whatever your motivation, keep that compulsion going. We’re gonna do this! 😀
The “Compelled” prompt is brought to you by Willow at Willowdot21. Please stop by her blog to have a read and say hi!
To find the rules for Just Jot It January, click here and join in today. It’s never too late! And don’t forget to ping back your January 24th post here!
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