Blogger Spotlight! CJ's Notebook
As much as I love to talk about myself, I also want to introduce you to some of my fellow bloggers, many of them I consider friends. So today let's meet Chrissy over at CJ's Notebook whom I met when I began listening to Traveling The Vortex. A fellow Whovian, book reader and con attendee, of course we'd be friends!
Tell us a little about yourselfā¦.
Iām
Chrissy from Salt Lake City, Utah. In my responsible-adult-type life, I am a
substitute librarian for Salt Lake County Library. I studied English and
Literature in college and found that I enjoy analyzing fiction, but not
necessarily the kinds of literature that they pick over in academia. I grew up
on a cattle ranch in western Utah where we had to create our own entertainment,
so I read a lot of books. My voracious love of reading is ultimately where my
voracious love of writing started.
What inspired you to first start writing your blog?
To
understand why I started my blog, I have to go back to when I was a kid reading
local columnists in the newspaper. I liked their humor and their snarkiness, so
I started trying to write my own columns in that style. With the exception of a
few that got printed in my middle school ānewspaperā - which was little more
than a newsletter that my 8th Grade Honors English class put together and
distributed twice during a unit on journalism (I actually got called into the
principalās office for something that I wrote because the principal didnāt like
what I wrote) - I didnāt really publish those columns. It was mostly just fun
to type stuff on the computer. Throughout my time in school, I tried to
incorporate that kind of tone in my writing, but I was constantly told it
wasnāt professional enough. I tried to write in that boring, bland writing that
was prized in āobjectiveā journalism (Ha! Pull the other one!), but I hated it.
Iāve never liked keeping my writing in that dry āmiddle-of-the-fenceā crap - I
like to pick a side and vehemently defend it (I hasten to add that I never
joined the Debate Team. Iām a writer, not a speechifier. I am not clever on my
feet.)
When I got to college, I joined the the school newspaper and eventually
became the Editor-in-Chief. I gave myself a weekly opinion column that year.
The year after, I transferred to a larger university and ended up with a
bi-weekly column at that schoolās newspaper. I enjoyed having a place to say
whatās on my mind and even got some feedback from readers, which I found out
that that I liked (even if it was nasty hate mail). But what I didnāt like was the restriction of
column space and how often my columns had to be edited down to fit on the page.
Thatās about the time I discovered LiveJournal and started blogging. And I
found my own voice there. I didnāt censor myself or try to be objective and
please everybody. I stated my opinion and that was that (I even learned to
inject more humor into my writing, which is always fun). My writing style has
changed a little over time, but that was where I got my start.
What was your first post? How do you think your blog has
changed since you first started blogging?
My
first blog post was on LiveJournal waaaaaaay back in September 2005. It was
probably something about āHey, neat, I have a blog! ... what do I do with it?ā
It wasnāt very long. My blog has changed
probably as much as the internet has since then. Iāve figured out how to incorporate
video and images into it, plus now I have enough of a back catalog to link to
other things Iāve written when I want to refer to those things. Plus (and this
is key) - Iām on Blogger now, which is a bit more public and less ācliqueyā
than LiveJournal and itās more professional. I still have my LiveJournal, but I
donāt do anything with it. In fact, my Tumblr probably does what LiveJournal
used to do.
My
first post on my current blog was kind of a āHey, I have this blog too!ā It was
more of me staking out a claim before really having any plans for it quite yet.
I just like to let things evolve as I go along. If an idea for a blog post
sounds good and I have enough time to write it, then Iāll do it.
What is something unique about your blog?
Iām
not sure if this is particularly āuniqueā or not, but my blog is sort of the
ācoreā of all my social media. Itās āhome base,ā if you will. I wander out onto
Twitter and Facebook and Tumblr - but cjās notebook (in all lowercase) is where
I get to do my own ādecoratingā and make it my own online space. I can
personalize the background and headers and fonts and color, plus I can post
badges and widgets in the sidebar to let people know what else Iām up to online
(itās kind of funny when I have a list of Sailor
Moon manga in my Goodreads sidebar next to my review of Captain America: The Winter Soldier). My
tastes in everything are wide and varied and I go through āphasesā of what
interests me.
For example, last year (2013) I wrote a series of blog posts
under a sub-section (of sorts) āLibrarian in the TARDIS.ā It was in celebration
of the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who
where I would talk about Doctor Who
stories from TV, audio, and books that I thought were good, but that I didnāt
think got enough positive attention. Honestly, I think that blogging project exhibited
some of my best writing and Iāve been trying to come up with another similar
theme that would command my attention and interest well-enough to generate that
kind of writing again. Since then, I havenāt had a regular feature, but just
going back to writing whatever I feel like writing about at the time.
What is your favorite part about blogging?
This
is going to sound crazy, but I love that I donāt have to answer to an editor or
a professor or a boss with my writing. I love to write, but I hate the anxiety
that comes with having to write a certain way in order to get a grade or a
paycheck. Iāve thought about writing professionally before, but thereās too
much stress involved in that. I just love being able to talk about my favorite
topics when the fancy strikes me. Sometimes I write a lot, sometimes I write a
little. Sometimes all I do is post a video that I think is cool and leave a
short paragraph about it and other times I write a long treatise on why itās
stupid that movie studios are splitting up movies based on book series into two
parts.
What are your plans for the future of your blog?
I
donāt have any major plans for the immediate future beyond just blogging about
whatever I want to talk endlessly about. Itās just a fun thing that I do - a
way to express my thoughts and opinions out into the ether and maybe someone
will connect with my words, whether in a positive or negative way (and if itās
negative, hope that they arenāt too harsh about it).
If money and time were no object,
what is something youād want to do or somewhere youād want to go to blog about?
I
would probably blog about the same things I already do, but moreso. Books,
movies, TV shows - whatever else strikes my fancy.
Where can we STALK you?
Twitter: @wildcat_media
Tumblr: wildcatmedia.tumblr.com
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/3388664-chrissy (Donāt judge my reading choices - working at the library means
I get exposed to all kinds of things I probably wouldnāt have given a second
thought to otherwise. Hence, my guilty pleasure of reading romance novels ^_^)
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