There should be a way (via shortcut or shell script) to fire up a very light version of cClearly that consists only of the Add Task screen.
Once the task is saved, It could quickly serialize to a flat file and be properly stored once the full application is loaded.
The reasoning behind this is that the database engine takes a while to fire up and sometimes you just want to quickly jot down your thoughts with minimal friction..
Of course, if cClearly is already running when the shortcut is invoked, communicate directly with the full app for storage..