This morning I thought, "I know I have a lot to write and post today, yet I can't remember where to start." I wrote my "A Round of Words in 80 Days" check in post, got up from my computer when it hit me. ITS SUNDAY! IT is time for SOC Sunday! With the holiday, all my time is wonky. I kept thinking Friday was Saturday. Having a house full of people, constantly, drips onto my writing fingers and makes all sort of unintelligible messes.
AND my SOC Writing, later in the day than usual, pleased me to no end. It even Mirrors Fadra's own post... sort of... anyway, step into 5 minutes within this writer's mind.
I have a strange addiction to places.
I love visiting author’s homes, memorials and graves. Most people know this by my constant visiting of such places, sometimes even ferreting them out. In fact, the ones of the lesser known authors are actually my favorite.
I have visited some biggies: Mark Twain’s house in Hartford, Connecticut is astounding: but I also love his home outside Angel’s Camp, California – the tiny dwelling he shared with several other men AND the place he wrote about his breakthrough story about Jumping Frogs. These are the places that give me shivers.
In Angel’s Camp, you can visit the bar where (not yet Mark Twain) Samuel Clemens told stories and heard stories. He may have got his first hankering to be a humorist rather than a typesetter and journalist right there.
You can even see the brothel a very young Clemens visited. Well, you can’t go inside if you are under 21 as it is above a rather boisterous bar, but you can look up and say, “Wow.. so much happened here!” My children and I even sang karaoke at a Mercantile which still looks much as it did when Clemens lived there.
Granted, his Hartford home grounds are also the location of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s house, I will give them that, but there is something about “being” with the author before he hit it big that completely inspired me.
Yesterday was an exceptional find for me: the final residence of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, author of The Yellow Wallpaper. She was quite prolific in her Pasadena years. Her future as an activist, reformer and suffrage worker also found place in her fiction, speeches and non-fiction essays. Did I mention she is the great-niece of Harriet Beecher Stowe?
I could go on and on but my timer just screeched at me, “Your five minutes are up!” so I do not have space to pontificate about why your children should visit author’s homes or how to inspire your writing and creativity by visiting author’s homes.
We’ll save those words for another writing time.
This was my 5 minute Stream of Consciousness Sunday post. It’s five minutes of your time and a brain dump. Want to try it? Here are the rules…
- Set a timer and write for 5 minutes only.
- Write an intro to the post if you want but don’t edit the post. No proofreading or spellchecking. This is writing in the raw.
- Publish it somewhere. Anywhere. The back door to your blog if you want. But make it accessible.
- Add the Stream of Consciousness Sunday badge to your post.
- Link up your post at AllThingsFadra.com
- Visit your fellow bloggers and show some love.
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By the way, this photo was taken in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts. I was sitting by the graves of the entire Alcott Family, as in Louisa May Alcott, her sisters and parents. A complete stranger happened by and I asked him to please capture the moment.
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© 2011
Julie Jordan Scott
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