Lytspeed's Creativity Journal

I read poetry tonight at Coffee on the Lowell. The event had a modest turnout, though from what I understand, it was better than the last meeting. I didn't think it was too bad for only their third outing. I did find out, however, that I listed the cr… more »

Tonight, my stepson joined us for dinner. He showed up wearing a shirt that said, "My parents said I could be anything I wanted, so I became an asshole." I thought it was pretty funny, but not necessarily appropriate for Red Lobster. Late in the eveni… more »

One thing that I am noticing about this Creativity Journal is that it is helping me to follow through on small projects. I said yesterday that I would finish the Word Work review today, and I did. Part of the point of making this a public journal is to… more »

I learned today that Dr. Robert L. Forward passed on over the weekend. I have read a few of Dr. Forward's books, and enjoyed Dragon's Egg very much as a young man. I wrote a brief review of Starquake for this website years ago, and in reading it over,… more »

I did nothing creative today. I did, however, watch the Broncos beat up on the Bills and spend time with my friends, the Cooleys. Sometimes that friend time is necessary, and since committing to writing and music a couple of years ago, I don't see them… more »

What? You haven't seen Willy Porter yet? You don't know who he is? You're missing out, pal. I got to see him for the second (and third, actually) time today. First, he gave an in-store appearance at Twist and Shout Underground in the afternoon and p… more »

The family went to the Rockies-Diamondbacks game tonight, then watched fireworks after the show. I always enjoy watching my two favorite baseball teams duke it out at Coors Field, and this is the last chance we had to do so this season. The stadium sta… more »

Okay, the cat's out of the bag. I can finally say that I knew Brian Plante's Chronicles of the Garden Variety Writers was fiction for most of its run. I began e-mailing Brian shortly after the series started, taking issue with the way he was playing un… more »

As promised, I did get some writing done at lunch. It wasn't a lot, but I did get a few paragraphs of "Chesterfield Gray" down. On the way to Stories for All Seasons, I noticed a wispy cloud being pushed over the jagged edge of a Flatirons peak by the… more »

I am beat tonight. I will definitely be going to bed early. I won't get any writing done tonight, but I will get some done tomorrow at lunch an also after Stories for All Seasons tomorrow night. I did a little creative work tonight, though it was prim… more »

I'm jammed right now. I'm sitting in front of my computer, trying to work on "Chesterfield Gray," and Pig Won't (as Bruce Holland Rogers calls the inertia we have to overcome in order to write) is doing everything he can to get me to stop. He's distrac… more »

I got to play music with my good friend Jim for the first time in a couple of years today. I showed him my finished Carvin Bolt Kit and my Fender Cyber-Twin, then we BSed for a while. Eventually, we sat down with our acoustic guitars and played for a c… more »

The closest I got to creativity today was troubleshooting my Windows 2000 server. I received an old motherboard, processor and case from one of my coworkers as payment for upgrading him to a new system, and proceeded to move my Windows 2000 Server insta… more »

I slacked off today. The only things in my day that resembled creativity were fixing a co-worker's home computer and playing Literati. We got a lot more good rain today, and that's always welcome this summer. When I was going in to work, I thought I s… more »

Today was a day for housekeeping on the website, and I didn't do much that was creative. Basically, I organized the files behind the scenes of the site, which will probably confuse the spiders, but the site is active enough that they will be back soon t… more »

For many U.S. citizens, the most tragic news to report on September 11, 2002 is that Johnny Unitas has died of a heart attack at age 69. However, I think many more U.S. citizens are breathing a collective sigh of relief that the anniversary date has com… more »

The Gothic Theatre is a great venue. I've seen a few acts there, Willy Porter, Indigenous, and The Rock Bottom Remainders among them. Tonight, I was fortunate enough to see Johnny A, with Liz Clark and another act opening. (Unfortunately, I wasn't abl… more »

The Old Possum's Writing Group met tonight, and for the first time in recent memory, no female members showed up. That was a little strange, and slightly changed the dynamic of the group, I think. It wasn't a significant change, but it did have a bit m… more »

Today I picked up a bunch of great books at a garage sale, including another copy of Ellison's Angry Candy, Datlow's Alien Sex anthology, several issues of Glimmer Train, a Leslie Marmon Silko book, the screenplay and director's journal for Darren Aronof… more »

Today, we celebrated my friend Jackie's birthday by going to a mini-golf course and out to dinner at Pizzeria Uno. That didn't keep me from getting some reading done, though. I also read about half of Trey Barker's chapbook, Where the Southern Cross th… more »

I didn't write today. I did do a helluva lot of thinking about writing, but I didn't write. The thinking started in the shower this morning. Unconsciously using techniques from Bruce Holland Rogers' Word Work, I imagined myself reading poetry to an en… more »

Story ideas are everywhere. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to sell you his idea service. Today, as I was leaving the grocery store, I pulled up next to a nice black car at the stoplight. The driver was a young blonde woman, her hair pulled back i… more »

Today is the 14th anniversary of my first wedding. It's one of those dates that I just can't forget, try as I might. Amy, if you're reading this, happy former anniversary. I'm sorry things worked out as they did, but I'm glad we get along pretty well… more »

I tried a few configuration and component changes on the server today in an attempt to get it to recognize the new drive. I even manually specified the drive's configuration in CMOS and reinstalled the operating system with the jumpers in a different p… more »

My suspicions about the motherboard are correct. It doesn't recognize the new drive unless I use the alternate jumper settings to fool the BIOS into thinking the drive is a different size than it really is. That's not a big deal, but the drive document… more »

Today was a relaxing day. I engaged in one of my favorite hobbies: building computers. Using the spare parts I have hanging around the house, I decided to rebuild my home network server. Basically, it acts as a file repository and print server, and si… more »