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…

    Well, now that all is said and done with the interview, it’s time to get back into the full swing of things and get back to writing. I won’t go into details as to who I interviewed with, but I will say it did not go as successful as I thought it would, but it is alright. In the end, it was a great experience and possible one that made me realize what it is I need to do and what I want to do are in fact the same thing. And with this in mind, I am going to commit more time to both writing and programming not only this month, but the following months to come. I’ve decided to go into full production mode on my novel concept and an open source project that I will put online once started. But as a first action, by this weekend, I will post the first version of the theme code that powers this site. The design itself is under a separate license, however any code I have written will be fully under the latest version the the Gnu Public License. I’ll do a check before I do this to see if it violates the license, though I don’t think this will be a problem. Also, I am rolling around the idea of placing something on the Entrecard shop, though I’m not sure what. In any case, if this post does not make it apparent, my mind’s been a swirling mass of thoughts and ideas. Ever since the interview was completely botched, the electrons in the chunk of gray matter in my cranium has going into overdrive and I haven’t felt better. So, stayed tune this month as I think this will one that will be one of creative rebirth on all fronts.

   As a product review, I think I found my top notebook now. As my interview was in Chicago and since my second day was empty, I decided to go to some of the museums of the city. One of them happened to be the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art. In there, not only did I see great works of art, but also possibly the coolest notebook ever : The Orange Notebook. Part of the bigger Write On & On series, the notebook is pretty simple in appearance, but I simply love it. Maybe it because it looks like an tech manual, or that it has that Valve Orange look to it, but whatever the case, I simply love the thing. I will probably buy the other colors, minus pink and use these as my main notebooks, though I don’t know if I’ll warm up to them as quickly as I did to the orange color. It just invokes everything I think I want in a notebook and feel like it is my notebook. Unlike my previous attempts with Moleskine notebooks everything simply clicked with this little guy. At at $5 a pop, I’m not complaining. Anyways, if you’re in the market for a new notebook, I’d recommend this one. So far its pretty sturdy, though as I just bought the notebook and its only seen so much abuse. If it tears within the week, you’ll hear me complain.