Memoirs of an English Major

    As a writer, I’m always on the look for a good way to keep track of my thoughts and when I get them. My brain is contently day dreaming and coming up with strange ideas that I know if I don’t write them at that moment, I will lose it. So, how I do it? It all depends on where I am.

    On the computer side or when I’m out and about, I’ve been using Evernote theses days. It’s a great program to write notes on and keep track of stray thoughts. Plus, since it saves to the web, I can access it from anywhere, even my iPhone. It’s been an valuable little app and I’m so glad I signed up for it. Well worth a try if you’re in need of an application just to jot down thoughts.

   If I’m at home and not near a comp, I turn to my trusty notebook. Though it sits by my bedside, it helps at those stray moment of the night to quickly write down an idea, thought, or simply a quote for a character in a story. As I tend to have ideas at the strangest moments, I’ve learned to be prepared.

   I know this post was short, so as a bonus, I’m making my short story ideas public. Check out what strange thoughts go through my head at http://www.evernote.com/pub/vincent404/story-ideas. Check it out.

Ever since Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) keynote earlier this week, I’ve been extremely excited. Even though I still have yet to purchase my first Apple computer, I am a huge supporter of the company and its principles. I know some out there really don’t see why I support the company, considering that I’m well aware I could not only build a faster computer at a cheaper cost. Well, to be honest, it’s not the hardware that’s attractive, but simply a lot of the programs that are made for the mac side, such as Scrivener and Textmate. Sometimes though, I do wish those Objective-C coders would migrate their cocoa applications over to the Windows side, just so I could try them out.

     But tonight’s post is not about WWDC. The event itself is covered in numerous places, so if you want more information on that, please refer to those articles. Nope, tonight is one other thought that entered my head during my travels, captured in my new orange book. It is another stray thought, though it is once again that of a character. It is a fairly fleshed out character and is already part of a story. As to where this will be worked into, I am not quite sure. Probably somewhere important. Anyway, enjoy.

read on…

“Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters,” - Neil Gaiman

   I know I haven’t blogged in a while, but I have been racking my head trying to write this short story for the short story competition on Bebo Author. Originally, I figured I would start off with a small project that would force me to lead into one of my larger planned projects, but it just wouldn’t come out the way I wanted, perhaps thinking of a different medium for that. So , I then contemplated writing something bit closer to home and it occurred to me the topic over this weekend. I started off writing about it with a certain approach, trying to work in a conversation a friend and mine had on it, using that as starting point. But that didn’t work out. And then it hit me… I was writing without a muse.

read on…