Below are the 10 most recent journal entries recorded in CJ the Aspiring Writer's LiveJournal:

Friday, June 2nd, 2006
10:33 pm	Jumpstart your writing Hat tip to lifehacker for the link: Simple Things You Can Do Right Now To Jumpstart Your Writing Efforts. "...make writing part of your daily regimen." "Take part in online writing prompt projects ..." Some food for thought in the comments, too. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, April 29th, 2006
12:20 pm	Scalzi on writing Hat tip to Diane Duane at Out of Ambit for this gem: John Scalzi's "10 Things Teenage Writers Should Know About Writing" Lots of it applies perfectly well to me at 38. (Comment on this)
Thursday, December 1st, 2005
8:44 pm	Lessons learned from NaNoWriMo 2005 1. I really enjoy writing about wacky stuff. I have fun doing that; it energizes me; I am cheerful when I'm coming up with completely implausible stuff. (Now if only I could make those bits funny as well. This could be a very powerful combination.) 2. Don't start without a plan. Some people may be able to manage this and turn out a creditable story with no forethought; I am not one of those people. It's hard enough to write fifty thousand words when you have a subject. I need to do myself a favor and have a plan before November 1. 2a: Any plan is better than no plan. NaNoWriMo can be a great learning experience even if what I churn out is not a novel. Fifty kilowords of introspection, 1667 words apiece about thirty new and wacky characters, anything that will keep me disciplined and keep me writing is teaching me something. I don't know if that will be true forever, but I'm enough of a tyro that it's true now. 3. I write better and faster when writing about something I know well. Comparing two pieces could potentially give me some very good things to work on when editing. 4. Some of the best stuff I come up with is in response to a random challenge, eg something Rob suggests I do. (Also some of the worst stuff I come up with, but I didn't learn that half during NaNo.) Current Mood: accomplished (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 22nd, 2005
7:12 pm	Writing what I know Lessons I learned last night, when I wrote over 7 kilowords: 1. I can write a lot of verbiage at a breakneck pace when I'm writing about something I know very well. Sure, people are always saying "write what you know". The problem is they never qualify it. I don't think "writing what I know" means every main character in every story of mine will be a middle-aged female embedded software developer with bad feet. But I started writing about a pilot doing a preflight inspection of a Piper Warrior and it was stunning to see how fast those words could pour out. 2. I write better prose when I'm writing about something I know very well. This was completely unexpected. It surprises me and makes me think. I can identify one way this prose is better: it lacks all that awkward scene detail like "and then Fred walked back around the desk and sat down". If I have words crowding their way out of my brain, I find a quicker way to convey where Fred went. Maybe I won't bother to convey it at all if it's not important! When I have a lot to say I write the important stuff. This is a big new lesson for me. When I can "write the important stuff" all the time, even when I'm blatantly making shit up, then I'll be a significantly better wordcrafter than I am today. Current Mood: learning! (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 1st, 2005
11:22 am	Wacky ideas Idea (fantasy genre): Magical weather reports. "50% chance of flare-ups this morning, mellowing out into a light but steady power flow later in the afternoon." Idea from a comment elsewhere: What if we had the "fall back" time adjustment every weekend? Of course, if we did that we'd be out of sync with the sun half the time -- and the 24-week cycle wouldn't line up QUITE right with a 52-week year. Imagine: "Since Valentine's Day will be dark this year, why not try a candlelit outdoor hot tub experience at the spa?" "July 4th is bright, so the fireworks will be in the evening." "Christmas was dark when I was a kid, so I'm getting nostalgic now that we're waking up to Santa in pitch black again." (And as I wrote in my own journal [NaNo filter], this morning I put a swordsman from the thirteenth century in a suburban office park. I don't know why. What if I made him sit through a company benefits meeting? What if he got befriended by a talking cat?) Where does this stuff come from? It just arrives. Poof: ...hey look, that's nutty! There's got to be a place for this kind of imagination. I flatter myself by thinking it's somewhat like the wacky creativity of Douglas Adams. Maybe I could use it to make something fun to read. Current Mood: hopeful (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 2nd, 2005
1:48 pm	I HUNGER Hide your lunch. Hide the office supplies. Nothing is safe from CJ the Devourer. Mmm, that soul over there looks mighty tasty. Read this message quickly and flee, that you might live a few hours longer before the black hole consumes you. Current Mood: silly (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 2nd, 2004
4:12 pm	NaNo is starting to gel. 1805 today, and I'm pretty busy. Things are starting to gel. Thank goodness for long (and very long-winded!) company meetings, where I can make notes like "Hideaway equals old Jerizard magic school". I hope I can catch up at work so I don't have to drop NaNo. So what exactly has started to gel? I've got a magic artifact, damaged and the parts scattered; a threat (plague) which can be fought effectively only with the repaired artifact; a snotty felinoid race; a shortsighted and bigoted ruler whom the cats call "Hairball"; and two heroes - one's a street thief and the other is one of the nonhumans. The street thief's hideout is on the site of an ancient magic school, the one that made the artifact. This coincidence will mess up his life something fierce. The nonhuman, currently not much more than a kitten, also gets in the wrong place at the wrong time. I haven't decided his fate yet; either he's the one that gets abducted by aliens or he gets the job of ruler after he eats the bad guy. Maybe both. Current Mood: hopeful (Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 27th, 2004
11:11 am	NaNo 2004: SILLY! I am certain I do not have time to do a good job on anything serious for NaNoWriMo 2004. I'm working full-time at a startup company ('nuff said right there), I'm cramming Japanese as fast as I can for a trip in early January (TWO Pimsleur sets in two months!), and I'm going to write a freakin' novel? I don't THINK so. In an effort to avoid being the one who's dumping her entire e-mail inbox into her manuscript on November 29, I've decided to make my novel silly as all get-out. Fantasy? Sure. What's that parchment lying on the doorstep? Oh, it says INCREASE THE SIZE OF YOUR SWORD. Any weird races? Yeah, some man-sized hyperintelligent felines who keep irritating the hell out of the humans with their superior attitude. Any others? Yes, I think a subplot describing a war between rival strains of blood flukes would be pretty cool. I'm ticked about those cats already. Don't worry, several of the humans own really freakin' big dogs. Snobby creatures look hilarious stuck in a tree. What happens to the main character when the author gets bored? Probably alien abduction. By mistake, 'cause the guy the aliens wanted ducked at the last moment. Oooookay, do you have a title for this? My working title is "Huh?". A couple of days of brainstorming might give me a way to weave all this together. Or not. Hell, if John deChancie can get published with nothing more coherent than an unending array of bad puns and a volcano on the golf course, I resolve to feel good about whatever I barf onto the page in these thirty days. Current Mood: hopeful (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, August 15th, 2004
4:45 pm	Going through old notebooks I'm going through a writing notebook from October 2003, and I found a page that tickled my funnybone. I have no idea where it came from: a writing exercise suggested by a book, most likely, but which one escapes me. ( Here it is. ) Current Mood: amused (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 8th, 2004
5:45 pm	oneword Today's oneword ( and my response ) Current Mood: awake (Comment on this)