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Just Jot It January 28th – Serendipity

This isn’t the first time I’ve written about serendipity on this blog. The last time was just a little more than two years ago. I talked about how I met my children’s father; it was a serendipitous occasion.

However, something happened more recently that makes me think it’s possible for serendipity to work in reverse. Allow me to tell you a story.

Once upon a time there was a girl who was walking alone around Tokyo, browsing through the open air market on a crisp but sunny November day in 2015 when she came across a man selling silver jewelry. This girl loved silver jewelry, in fact she was wearing four rings upon her fingers, all of them in silver.

As she perused the gentleman’s wares, she came across a ring that was identical to one of those she was wearing. Unable to contain her excitement at the chances of this happening, she pointed to the ring on the stand and then to the ring on her finger, to share with the man this unbelievable find. What she didn’t have the vocabulary in Japanese to say was that she had bought the ring she was wearing eleven years ago… in Gatineau, Quebec, Canada!

Extraordinary, wouldn’t you say?

Fast forward to Sunday, January 24th, 2016, the very same girl was out taking pictures when she accidentally took a picture of her ring with her cell phone.

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How silly, she thought, and she considered deleting the picture but for some reason she didn’t. And now the girl is glad, for she had no way of knowing she would lose that very same ring the next day. No more than she could have known she should have bought its duplicate when she found it in Tokyo.

Because as it turns out, she found her ring in the most unlikely place in the world, two months before she lost it.

The “Serendipity” prompt is brought to you by Jan at JT Twissel. If you don’t already know her, please head on over and have a read!

JJJ 2016

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 28th post here!


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Tuesday Use It In A Sentence – Master

For this week’s Wednesday Tuesday Use It In A Sentence, (check it out!), I decided to post an excerpt of my novel The Great Dagmaru for the very first time! From Chapter 34:

With a bowl of chicken noodle soup and crackers on a tray balanced on his left hand, Stephen rapped on Nina’s bedroom door. When he heard a muffled, “Do I have to?” he announced himself.
“Master!” Nina said with a great amount of shuffling about. “Come in, please.”
Disconcerted, but hardly surprised to see her room all but wallpapered in posters of himself, he tried not to stare at the walls. She sat up in bed dressed in an old-fashioned flannel nightie, and he placed the tray on her lap. He perched himself on the end of the bed and faced her. Nina stared at him with her mouth agape as if unable to believe he was actually there in the flesh.
“We need to talk,” he said. “But first I want you to try to eat something.”
At his command she pulled herself together and picked up a cracker.
“Your mother tells me you were sick this morning.”
“Yes, Master. I’m very sorry Master, I promise I won’t drink any more.” She bent her head and took a mouse-like nibble.
Stephen wholeheartedly wished he could tell Nina to stop with the “master” crap for five minutes and simply talk to her, adult to adult, but to give her that equality even for a moment would upset the balance. Leading her to believe it could happen again whilst she was still bound to servitude would probably end in disaster.
He watched her drink some of her soup and when it looked like she might not run for the washroom he decided he may as well begin.
“I want to thank you, Nina.”
Her eyes snapped open over the spoonful of soup she had just put to her lips. Stephen was glad she didn’t have it in her mouth – he thought he likely would have worn it.
“You…want to thank me?” She returned the spoon to the bowl slowly.
“Yes. You made me realize something. In fact you made both myself and Miss Anderson realize something.”
She stared at him, poised as though she was going to take flight. He wondered if he had been hasty in thinking that she was going to keep her lunch down. He decided to go on anyway.

I can’t believe I’m nervous about hitting the publish button. Oh well, here goes nothing.


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One-Liner Wednesday – It really sucks

Woke up to a new message

Woke up to a new message on my fridge… I wonder who left it?

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It was a rough night of peeing everywhere and bumping into things. (Winston, not me) It took him a few tries to get used to going down the small step through the back door without his cone jamming between the slats, causing him to get stuck. He’s still sucking air occasionally, but he doesn’t seem to be in any discomfort. I sincerely hope this is the end of his troubles. I can’t afford any more. But hey, the good news is it was only $2,200 instead of $2,500! 🙄

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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.” However, if you’d like to combine One-Liner Wednesday with Just Jot It January, go right ahead!

The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:

1. Make it one sentence.

2. Make it either funny or inspirational.

3. Use our unique tag #1linerWeds.

4. Have fun!


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Just Jot It January 27th – Mendaciloquent

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!

JJJ 2016

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.


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Just Jot It January Prompt for Wednesday Jan. 27th

This is it! I’m posting one last time to ask for your help in choosing a prompt word for tomorrow’s Just Jot It January.

The rules for getting your prompt in are:

  1. Enter one word in the comments below. If your comment includes more than one word, your suggestion will be eliminated.
  2. If you’ve already contributed to the existing prompts for the rest of the month, you are automatically disqualified.
  3. Come up with something original. The existing prompt words can be found here: https://lindaghill.com/2015/12/31/just-jot-it-january-2016-rules/ Please make sure you don’t enter a duplicate.
  4. Any word is eligible, just keep it clean.
  5. The first one to write their word below, wins. Hurry up!

P.S. If your word is the first and is chosen, you’ll also have your blog linked to my daily post tomorrow. It’s well worth the effort!

Thank you!!

 


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Just Jot It January 25th – Prestidigitation

Funny story: When I saw “prestidigitation” suggested as a prompt by my friend, the lovely Pamela, I have to admit I cringed a little bit. There’s a mouthful, I thought. I wonder what it means? Regardless of my initial reaction, I was looking forward to writing a post on it. It’s a fact that I work better under pressure, at least when writing is concerned. I believe in this fact so much that I forced myself to wait until I was ready to write this post to look the word up in the dictionary. When I did, I had to laugh at myself.

You see, as it turns out I have been writing about prestidigitation quite constantly, quite vigorously, and quite intently, for more than four years without realizing it. My novel, which took eighteen months to write and is on its seventh revision, is about a magician. Prestidigitation means to perform magic.

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How did I not know this?!?

So thank you, Pamela. The word “prestidigitation” will find its way into my novel. And that page will be dedicated to you!

Speaking of prestidigitators, you may remember I met a very nice magician last summer and requested an interview with him, both for my own research and to share with the public. I’m quite embarrassed to say I still haven’t managed to use that interview anywhere, but I haven’t given up. I plan to try pitching it to a few more places but, if I’ve had no success by the end of March, I’ll post the interview here. Please look forward to it!

The “Prestidigitation” prompt is brought to you by Pamela at Butterfly Sand. If you don’t already know her, please click on the link and have a read!

JJJ 2016

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 21st post here!


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Just Jot It January 24th – Compelled – We’re almost there!

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!

JJJ 2016

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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Just Jot It January 23rd – Odd/Even #SoCS

It’s odd that even though I love to write, sometimes it seems such a chore. I think back to a video* I watched again just recently of John Cleese, standing in front of an audience, talking about creativity. He stresses the importance of needing to be free of stress (haha. my bad) in order to be creative. He says that we have to be able to play – to play with ideas at least – and that means not being bogged down by the multitude of things we MUST do. Because let’s face it, as adults play is often at the bottom of our list of things to do.

Like just now, a perfect example: I was happily writing away when I heard a noise from the kitchen. The puppy was chewing on the table. Being a responsible adult who doesn’t want teeth marks in my table, I had to get up and leave my writing. It never ends!

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Winston

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…the constantly wiggly

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…unless he’s sleeping

So Mr. Cleese, quite rightly suggests that there must me a time and a place to be creative. Only I rarely get it. And that really cuts into my enjoyment of writing.

So I come back to the beginning, don’t I? It’s not really odd.

And then even when I do get a moment to myself, and a space to myself, according to Mr. Cleese (and my own experience) it takes time to wind down. Speaking of wind, the dog just farted. For a small pup he can cause a big stink! Where was I? Oh yeah. Getting in the mood. There are times that I’m in the mood to write even when I’m stressed. An idea will pop into my head, or just a mood will overcome me and I can’t not write.

Being a writer is such a strange thing!

The “odd/even” prompt is brought to you by Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Click here to join in, and leave your link for everyone to see!

SoCS badge 2015

JJJ 2016

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.

*Google “John Cleese on creativity” to find it on Youtube.


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The Friday Reminder and Prompt for #SoCS Jan. 23/16

Look at that! It’s Friday again and time for the Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt!  The SoCS prompt will also be tomorrow’s Just Jot It January prompt word, 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!  I meant to post this earlier but it seems there’s no end to my to-do list, so here I am. And here’s the prompt:

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “odd/even.”  Use one, use both, use ’em any way you’d like! Enjoy!

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!!

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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.

8. Have fun!


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Just Jot It January 22nd – Felicity

I always thought the word “felicity” meant easy. And it does, kind of. One of the definitions is, and I quote from Merriam-Webster online, “a pleasing manner or quality especially in art or language,
“an apt expression.”

So it seems to me that it means a way of wording something that makes the something easy to understand. Yes? Yeah, okay. I’m trying to justify myself. Is it working?

The first two definitions of “felicity” from the same source are, “a : the quality or state of being happy; especially : great happiness, b : an instance of happiness,
“something that causes happiness.”

So I suppose it really means happiness.

“Felicity” always reminds me though of an early 2000’s TV show called Felicity. I never watched it. I do recall seeing previews in which a woman (presumably Felicity, played by Keri Russell) seemed to be always in a state of angst. Which would have made the show quite ironic I suppose. I don’t enjoy watching ironic shows – they make my head hurt.

There’s one other thing the word reminds me of – felicitations, meaning best wishes or, as a translation from French, congratulations. I’ve always wondered at people saying congratulations to an individual for turning a year older. But it is indeed the way some say happy birthday. Weird.

The “Felicity” prompt is brought to you by Fun at Simply Me. If you don’t already know her, please head on over and have a read!

JJJ 2016

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 22nd post here!