Interior Monologue: Blah...Blah...Blah
CeCe’s Musings
Day 8
Creative Writer’s Notebook by John Gillard
Metro Books, 2016
Writing Prompt: Interior monologue: Yourself
Write an interior monologue using stream of consciousness from your own perspective (ie, write down the flow of your own conscious thought).
It is Friday, a day that used to mean everything when I was working, yet after nine years of retired life, Friday is just another day. Now, for my husband who is still toiling at his job, Friday is a beacon.
I’m up in my office, attempting the write my 8th day toward my goal of 40 days. I have already missed two days, though. One because I was entertaining granddaughters, and the other was a trip up to see my mother. I’m finding it isn’t easy to devote time every day for the written word. Life gets in the way. Yet, I am not discouraged. I’m sticking to it, even if I miss days. I am finding my way out of the block, my wall of excuses I created on why I couldn’t write. These prompts have chipped through the morass. Now, I acknowledge it isn’t glorious writing. Some have been excruciatingly awful, but I am writing. And soon awful may evolve into average.
Back to Friday. This is the last Friday of February, the shortest month that has an extra day in 2024. Leap Day. I’ve never been quite sure why we tack on an extra day every four years, something to do with evening out our calendars. Leap Day. It sounds like a day we all should leap and dance around, not caring what others think of our craziness, but it is just an additional day. No celebrations or parades or fireworks. Just another day of February.
I am finding this steam of consciousness thing fun and frustrating. James Joyce wrote interior monologues without punctuation, but I cannot do it. I even put commas and periods in texts. I am hardwired that way. A missing piece of punctuation gives me the twitches, and an apostrophe where it shouldn’t be located makes me scream inside my head. Ack! I have been known to erase such errant punctuation from restaurant whiteboards. It is either a gift or disease. Can’t help it.
As I write, my cat Willa is climbing up and down the office chairs, her sharp nails digging into the cloth. I am still getting used to having a cat with claws. In fact, I will probably need to get a new reading chair soon since she is slowly shredding the sides. All the “No’s” and “Stop that’s” have not ceased this behavior. Now she is on the back of my chair gazing out of the second story window. Willa makes cackling sounds at birds, and she’s always on the lookout for the neighborhood scallawag cat we call Sebastian. Silly kitty.
I look around my office and see snippets of me: books, notebooks, photos of family, two struggling plants, and a desk I hadn’t used for awhile until lately. Hello, writing space. It is lovely to be back.
