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The Friday Reminder and Prompt for SoCS January 24/15

Welcome! It’s that day of the week again – Friday, and time for your Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt. I’m using one of my stockpiled ideas this week for the prompt – been quite busy with not much time for writing or being inspired. But you know how that is, right? That’s why prompts are good! 😀

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “most/least.”  Use one or both of the words in your post or just write with one or both in mind. But whatever you do, 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!!

socs-badge

Badge by: Doobster @ Mindful Digressions

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,” or “Begin with the word ‘The’.”

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. Have fun!


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JusJoJan 21 – Write Drunk, Edit Sober

“Write drunk, edit sober.” Some say it was Hemingway who said it, some say Peter deVries. Whoever. More than this quote has made me wish I could handle being an alcoholic for the sake of my writing. When you consider how much genius has come out of known drug abusers (see any number of rock stars), you have to wonder if there’s anything to it. I mean, seriously, so much comes to mind when you’ve had a few that appears, at least in that moment, to be the most brilliant idea that anyone ever has ever come up with, that how can you possibly be wrong? What can you possibly say that’s not completely off-the-wall enlightening to the whole of mankind? Poetry flows, prose splats onto the page like the very sunshine that beams through your window – or would if it wasn’t actually the middle of the night while everyone else is sleeping, like you should be…

But then.

You wake up in the morning and read that is which is splatted unceremoniously upon the page and you think… I need to be sober to edit this crap.

Ah, it’s an artist’s life.

JJJ 2015Just Jot It January – it’s the bomb! Join in today! https://lindaghill.com/2015/01/01/just-jot-it-january-pingback-post-and-rules/


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JusJoJan Day 21-30 Prompt

Aaaand now for something completely different. I agonized long and hard over this prompt and finally I’ve decided to take the plunge.

Your final prompt in the 2015 edition of Just Jot It January is, sex.

Want some suggestions on how to use this prompt? Do you really need them? Okay, here we go:

1. The obvious.

2. The not-so-obvious. Try really really hard NOT to write something overt while sticking to the subject. In other words, keep it subtle.

3. Sex – everyone’s got one. Write something educational!

4. Don’t use the prompt at all! It’s not mandatory – it’s only if you get stuck. Alternatively, use the prompt every day for 10 days. It’s up to you!

5. I’m adding a fifth suggestion this time around. I strongly suggest that if you write something explicit, you write “Explicit” in the first sentence, so as not to surprise anyone at work. ALSO, if you write something non-explicit but you have a suggestive title to your post, write “Non-Explicit” in the first sentence so that your readers will know it’s safe to go ahead.

Please make sure you check back both here and at the pingback page and see who has posted – it’s a great way to build your blogging community and reciprocate. And don’t forget the most important part – have fun!! Let’s finish the month off with a bang, shall we? 😀

This post is part of JusJoJan: https://lindaghill.com/2015/01/01/just-jot-it-january-pingback-post-and-rules/ Anyone can join in!


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JusJoJan 20 – Alexa Rank

I thought as it’s the last day of the second Just Jot It January prompt, which is ‘Rithmatic, I’d take the opportunity to talk about a little website called alexa.com. Actually, it’s a huge website, dedicated to calculating every other website’s world ranking. Mine, this one you’re reading now, apparently comes in a little over 1.7 millionth in the world, and a little under a respectable 400,000th in the United States, where, according to Alexa, 80.1% of my traffic comes from. Cool, eh? It does the ‘rithmatic for you!

The numbers seem to fluctuate often – every minute perhaps? How accurate it is is anyone’s guess.

You can look up your site too. Just google “alexa rank” and your web address. There’s a search bar there too. If you find your site high in the ranking compared to mine, take heart. My fiction blog (at http://lindaghillfiction.com/ – go visit sometime!) ranks just under 17 millionth in the world – so high that it refuses to give me any more stats. (It seems the closer you are to #1, the more stats you get.)

If you’re interested in checking your own website, comment with your ranking!

JJJ 2015 Join in Just Jot It January today! https://lindaghill.com/2015/01/01/just-jot-it-january-pingback-post-and-rules/ It’s a great way to get motivated!


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Great Loss = Great Beauty

Beautifully written. This is where great art comes from.
(comments closed here: please comment on the original post)

Paul Davis's avatarProject Volden

I sit here, with only the clinking of buttons and zippers as the dryer spins, because I just felt within my heart great loss, and at the same time I was forced to recognize great beauty in a world that was fictitious.

After watching The Grand Budapest, I can’t help but feel the immense loss of our protagonist, just as the narrator said from the beginning that we were delving into the mind of an unequaled man of loneliness. For a time I sat on the couch, watching the credits, taking in what I had just been ripped out of me, after the movie cleverly placed it within my very fabric. The people, the lifestyle, the era long since passed. I thought of how the movie resembled the battles of Don Quixote living out his fantasies in a world which no longer existed, but he tried so hard to


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JusJoJan 19 – Travel Plans

Right on the heels of my trip to Japan, I’ve already started planning my next adventure. No, not London, or Paris, or even Beijing. I’m going to beautiful Kingston, Ontario. Less than an hour’s drive away. In July.

Call me crazy, but I wanted to make sure I get a good, cheap room close enough to downtown that I’ll be able to walk to where all the action is – to the Busker’s Festival and on my annual pilgrimage to the setting of my novel, The Great Dagmaru. This will be my third year in a row if you count the hospital-ridden disaster last year was. Which brings me to my next point.

Booking.com. I decided to try them out last year, taking them at their word that if I booked a hotel with them I could cancel any time. Well, last year I had to cancel. At the very last second. And it didn’t cost me a cent for the hotel. So I thought great – I’ll take a chance and book with them again for my trip to Tokyo. Again, smooth as silk. All my bookings were exactly as planned, no upfront fees.

And that’s why I already have a B & B booked for July 9th at $140/night and two nights at the Queen’s University campus in a two bedroom suite for $99/night.

Welcome to Queens

What kills me? The most I paid in one of the biggest cities in the world – Tokyo – was less than $90/night. The cheapest, and it was a nice hotel, came to $66 for the night.

Canada is damned expensive. Even if you book half a year in advance.

This jot is part of Just Jot It January. Click on the link and join in! Maybe you’ll meet some new friends! https://lindaghill.com/2015/01/01/just-jot-it-january-pingback-post-and-rules/

JJJ 2015


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The Friday Reminder and Prompt for SoCS January 17/15

As I head off to the dentist this morning, free to do so since Alex is FINALLY back to school, I can’t help but think of a single, positive word. Most relevant at the moment for me, and I hope in some way for you as well. So without further ado:

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “heal/heel.”  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!!

socs-badge

Badge by: Doobster @ Mindful Digressions

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,” or “Begin with the word ‘The’.”

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. Have fun!


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JusJoJan 14 – Annoying Phone Calls

For some random reason I was thinking today about a series of prank phone calls I received a while back and, as I often do, I thought about what I should have said. Don’t you hate it when that happens? Thinking of the perfect response half an hour – or half a year – later is one of my pet peeves. But I digress.

These particular calls came one night when I was alone in the house, trying to get some hard-earned sleep. They started after midnight with someone, a party blasting in the background, asking me for somebody I wasn’t. Apparently it was so hilarious that Mona or whoever they were looking for wasn’t at my number that they called back again. And again. And again. Drunk out of their gourds, I think they were passing the phone around each time they dialed.

Back to my brilliant idea. What I should have done:

Me: Domino’s Pizza

Them: (or so I imagine they would say) Hey, you dialed Domino’s!

Me: How can I help you?

Them: You guys want a pizza?

Me: Will that be for delivery?

Them: Sure!

Me: (muffling a giggle) What’s your address? Phone number?

Ah, drunk people are just too easy. At least in my imagination. If I ever get a chance to try this, I’ll let you know how it goes.

Just Jot It January! https://lindaghill.com/2015/01/01/just-jot-it-january-pingback-post-and-rules/ Do it now!

JJJ 2015


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JusJoJan 11 – Just Random

Remember last week when I tripped over the suitcase in the dark? I have the weirdest injury from that. There’s a spot on the outside of my knee that’s numb except when I touch the front of my knee. If I touch it lightly it feels as though someone is rubbing their fingernail down the numb spot. If I forget about it and kneel on it, it hurts like hell. Nerve damage anyone?

I spent twenty minutes this afternoon looking for an excuse to have a glass of red wine. I finally found one. I shared it on my Facebook page, which, if you’re not following you should be. Here, I’ll make it easy for you to find it. https://www.facebook.com/lindaghill.fiction Cheers!

I’m absolutely dying to get to my notes from Japan and share them with the world. Alex is better today again, (yesterday was horrible but that seems to have passed) so with any luck he’ll be back at school tomorrow. 😀 I’m also hoping that the urge I’ve been feeling today to be more creatively sociable will remain with me. I want to start interacting more on Twitter and Facebook. It’ll be a challenge, but I think I’m up to it.

I have to admit I’m getting a little antsy over my novel’s beta readers. The only feedback I’ve had so far is that the first 20 or so pages weren’t that interesting. I know I can improve them. What I don’t know is if anyone got past them… *bites nails*

We haven’t had much snow here but it’s freakin’ cold. Here’s a picture of me in a 20km/hr, -26°C head wind:

CAM00546

In other news, we have a temporary cat. Actually, two of them. They go with the temporary cave dweller in my basement, also known as my eldest son. The good news is, the more sociable of the cats is keeping Alex busy. I’ll get pictures soon. Right now I believe Alex is trying to pry the cat out of a box…

Gotta go.

JJJ 2015Join in! https://lindaghill.com/2015/01/01/just-jot-it-january-pingback-post-and-rules/ It’s never too late!

(meow, smash, ahhh!)

 


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JusJoJan Day 11-20 Prompt

And now for something not completely different… I was originally going to make the three prompts for Just Jot It January 2015 Reading, Writing, and ‘Rithmatic, however, Writing has been covered in many of the prompts that fell under the Reading category which makes it seem a little–get ready for another “r” word–redundant. So for the second prompt I’ll skip straight on to ‘Rithmatic and make the third prompt something truly different.

Here are some ideas on what you can do with the prompt, “‘Rithmatic”:

1. Write something on adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, fractions… you get the idea.

2. Choose a number to write about. Any number.

3. Got a magic 8 ball at home? Roll it and see what comes up.

4. Don’t use the prompt at all! It’s not mandatory – it’s only if you get stuck. Alternatively, use the prompt every day for 10 days. It’s up to you!

Your next prompt will be posted on January 20th, to cover the dates from the 21st to the 30th.

I hope to be able to read more of your upcoming JusJoJan posts, but it seems Alex might still not be attending school next week at the rate he’s going, so it may be hit and miss. So I’m counting on you. Please make sure you check back to the prompt page and see who has posted – it’s a great way to build your blogging community and reciprocate. And don’t forget the most important part – have fun!!

This post is part of JusJoJan: https://lindaghill.com/2015/01/01/just-jot-it-january-pingback-post-and-rules/ Anyone can join in!