Tell me something I ought to know about you that will help me help you as a writer -- your aspirations, your fears and doubts, your literary or journalistic heroes, etc. Your comments should be as clear and complete as you can make them in a blog post. Remember this is my introduction to your writing. Impress me. Or at least don't bore me. (Lesson #1: Boring readers is among the worst things you can do to them. What's the worst? Probably to unintentionally confuse them.)
Please respond no later than Wednesday, January 25, at 3 p.m.
16 comments:
I would like to improve my writing by being more clear, concise and to the point. Sometimes I tend to ramble or say things in too many words. I would also like to be able to write with more details. It intrigues me when a writer uses so much detail that I can see the scene that he or she is describing. One thing I want this class to do for me is to break me away from the traditional journalistic writing style. As a journalism major I am used to writing boring, dry news stories. I want to be able to add spice to my journalistic writing voice.
I was 12 when I bought my first notebook. The first line I wrote went something like, "There is nothing better than finding your true love." I was a "hopeless Romantic" who wanted nothing more than to be the next great writer.
I continued to fill up notebooks with teenage angst, repetitive love stories and other optimistic thoughts until they stopped fitting in my bottom dresser drawer.
Then high school happened.
At the end of senior year, my guidance counselor told me that going to school for writing "wouldn't put bread on the table." She recommended that I major in journalism because it was more of a "career-based major."According to my mother's side of the family, they agreed that I should focus on picking a major that would give me money in the end. A.k.a. They didn't want me to major in writing at all--but a lawyer was a good choice.
Who was I to think that I would ever be published? Stupid girl.
Journalism it was--I guess. Class after class after class of the AP Stylebook being slapped in my face, professors giving me D's on my stories took its toll however. I was tired of writing like I was a cardboard cutout. "Your nut graf doesn't really tell me what the article is about," or my personal favorite, "You must write a 500 word article. That's all you get--500." Who said that 500 words was enough? God? Satan? The President? The hell if I know.
Hunter S. Thompson turned into my favorite journalist because of this. He could write so much and leave me with even more thoughts and images in my skull than any breaking news story I ever read. Part of the reason I love his Gonzo Journalism is because it breaks the monotonous cycle that reporters today have dug themselves into; it's boring predictable shit.
My fear about writing is not that I turn into a boring writer but instead, just go unnoticed. Part of every writer out there I think fears something similar to this. When I send out pieces to publishers, of course I want recognition, but on top of that, if I do get rejected I want a reason. I fear that my writing is insufficient and weak enough to slip under the radar never to be seen again.
I still want to be that next great writer. I want people to read my work and get inspired like I did when I read Letters From the Earth by Twain and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Thompson. I want people to read my work years after I die and still get something out of it.
All I ask from this course is to give me a push in the right direction. I like reading other authors' work because I know it will help me. I just need someone to push me not mold me into some robot that can only write when someone gives them a deadline and a word count. If you show what I'm doing wrong and why I'm stuck, I'll get out of the rut that I might've dug for myself.
I have always been utterly fascinated with the way that people can manipulate words in such a beautiful fashion. I remember times reading something as simple as a book review, and envying their writing skills. Great writers seem to make it look effortless.
When I was younger, I became infatuated with poetry—but it was more of the rhyming, less metaphorical type. Regardless, I would sit down and write little poems in my journal for hours. I think it’s what really got me interested in writing. From then on, in all my classes throughout middle school and high school, I enjoyed writing. I think I was among the few of the class that never sighed when getting assigned an essay or paper. Whenever I would show my writing to my parents, they always told me I was good. I mean, who knows if they were biased or just trying to build up my little ego, but regardless I took the compliment with a smile. And to be honest, I think it helped me feel like I was a good writer. But that word “good” is only subjective.
As far as what I hope to accomplish in writing…there’s a lot. I really want to improve my overall skills and figure out what exactly my style is. I seem to come off very wordy and sometimes may overuse a thesaurus to the point where a sentence can turn into an SAT vocabulary test. Just as I enjoy writing, I want others to enjoy my writing. While I don't necessarily see myself going into a profession mainly involving writing (Public Relations major), I still want to continue to write. Throughout my later years of high school and these few years of college, I have only written merely for academic purposes. I want to write just to write. I want to write about certain experiences and memories and turn those into beautiful short stories, like great writers can do. I want the motivation and confidence to write more.
After the first class, I believe that this course will be just what I need. I personally didn't care at all for the watered down journalistic style of writing way back when in JI. I didn't like not being able to write how I wanted, or what I wanted. This course will help refresh freedom and opportunities into my writing and I am excited to see where my writing goes.
I have always enjoyed writing, but it is something that I slightly struggle with. I always seem to have problems getting my thoughts down and as I am writing, I am constantly thinking about the right way to word my sentences or the right way to start a new paragraph.
I am an accounting major, as math and business are my strong points, but I am also journalism minor. I chose this minor because I think writing is a good skill to have and I also feel that it will give me a competitive advantage when it comes to job hunting, but most importantly, it would help improve my writing.
One of my dream jobs is to work for a company or at an accounting firm as a CPA, but also have the company come to me to help them write news releases, edit some writing that would go on their website or possibly even have me do the writing. I know that this may be farfetched at a larger firm or company as they most likely have their own department for that or outsource the jobs. However, at a smaller firm, this may be possible. I like the idea of having a dual role.
I want to learn how to explain stories better and how to describe things without being repetitive. Many times in my business textbooks, the author finishes describing something and two pages later, they’ll describe the exact same thing again using different wording possibly because it wasn’t explained well the first time. When I describe something, I want the reader to understand it the first time. I also want my stories to flow better, convey more emotion and show my personality. When I write something funny, I want the reader to laugh. Overall, I would like for this class to help to me develop and improve my writing.
"The snail finished his spaghetti and picked up the phone. It was the tax collector." An unusual subject for a third grader, tax collection was the focus of one of the few handwritten stories I have kept from my childhood. What interested me about this otherwise bland tale of a snail’s evening was that I had drawn pictures in place of nouns.
I’ve carried this marriage of text and drawing throughout my life and into my college thesis project, which is a series of comic books about my landlord, who has created a little home within our wall in which he and his son live. Seriously.
Not surprisingly, I am drawn to graphic novels and, like many other people I’d suppose, in shit I could never write myself because I am not smart or creative enough. Some of my own heroes, for example, are Chris Ware, Chip Kidd, Chuck Klosterman, Jon Ronson and David Sedaris.
What I’m most interested in learning is how to write creatively without sounding like a total jerk. Throughout high school, I was inadvertently taught to overwrite and then, in the journalism program, I was taught to strip my sentences bare. So, what I’d like to find during this class is a comfortable medium between pretentious snob and faceless daily newspaper writer.
As a senior taking my last semester of classes and then on to an internship in the fall, it's almost like hanging onto a fraying rope with a pit of fire as my safety net. I've been told for years that there are no jobs, journalism is a dying field, and that I’m better off learning a trade in medicine or computers. And as much as I tune these negative comments out, they still find ways to seep in and make me feel like my writing and reporting needs to be perfect if I want to get anyway in the world. But my passion keeps me trudging on. I've always thought of writing as a way for me to wear different hats because I get the chance to submerge myself in different topics. One day I could be writing about the tragedies of a house fire and how society can learn from such an event to the next day exposing the intricacies of an exposed drug ring. I don't think I've ever lost my childlike sense of curiosity because I always have a thirst to know more.
But what I have in innate curiosity is sometimes clouded by naivety. Sometimes I get too nervous to ask the important questions because I'm afraid. It holds me back. My favorite writers are those who interview musicians and write those really long pieces in magazines. They recreate the smokey rooms and sweaty people involved as if you actually know them. I want my writing to imbibe that, to make the reader react proactively. I hope by furthering to improve my writing this semester, my fears will lessen, and I will be more confident when it comes to the job market.
For as long as I remember, I have always wanted to be involved in writing. As a child, my mom would always find me writing short stories that I would never finish. Out of the hundreds of stories and poems in my journals and on my old computers, the only one I can remember is the one I wrote with my best friend. I think that encouraged me to write even more -- being a nerdy little child with my best friend. Some of my best childhood memories are my friend and I sitting in our houses coming up with ideas for our stories that we still talk about to this day.
In the sixth grade after a poem I wrote was published, I realized I could have a chance to pursue writing even further. From there, I never stopped trying to find my niche in writing. Actually, I’m still trying to find my niche -- and hopefully it is in journalism.
I’ve always grown up around journalism. Growing up my mother worked at Newsday, and now she works at the Daily News. Although my mother does not write, newspapers were always around my house and left out to read. In fact, I learned to read from a newspaper. I remember my mom asking me to look at the comics and asking me if I could understand them. I did more than understand them -- I read them to her at the age of three. My love for newspapers started then.
Since I was able to achieve reading success at such a young age, I will continue to strive for writing success as I grow older.
When I was a sophomore in high school, I bought a diary in an India-themed shop in some touristy part of North Carolina while visiting my grandparents. Amidst the seemingly hundreds of Buddha statues, figurines, magnets, key chains and whatever memorabilia they could manage to incorporate him with, I picked up the diary and, liking the cover (it was pressed with leaves and held in hemp-like pages), I pleaded with my grandma to buy it for me. The initial answer was a no. “I know what will happen,” she argued, “you’ll write in it for a week and it’ll end up under your bed.”
While this WAS a fair assumption (the bike she’d bought me sat in the garage, untouched. The MP3 player for my thirteenth birthday was abandoned as soon as I could afford an iPod - the list goes on and on), this book, as cliché as it sounds, called to me. I had to have it. I was on a mission to not only fill its pages, but to prove my grandma wrong. After a short argument and some convincing, I walked away from the store, diary in bag, wracking my brains with what I should write about that evening.
I filled that diary in about four months, writing religiously about every minute detail of my life. After that I filled a second, then a third and so on. I continued keeping a diary all throughout high school and continue to write in one in the present (The box of filled diaries in my closet taunts me with the angst-filled whining from my hormone fueled teen years).
When the college process started to loom over me, I realized that I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do with my life. Maybe I would become a veterinarian. Fashion designer? Sociologist (even though I had no idea what that entailed, but the title sounded lucrative enough). As I was whining about it to my mom one afternoon, she cut me off and said, “Jordan, why don’t you just go to school for writing? I mean, you do it all the time as it is.”
She was right. I did write all the time. The light bulb had been illuminated. She had parted the red seas of my conflict and I was on the road to an epiphany. After my mother’s suggestion, I made the decision to go to school for creative writing (which, obviously, transformed into a major in journalism) and never again doubted where I would be in my future. What I love about writing is that when I put words on a page, whether it be an essay, a poem, a blog post, whatever, I feel like I can unleash my mind in a way that I can never do verbally (I stand firm in the assumption that I must sound like a rambling, Hollywood archetype “valley girl” whenever I open my mouth. “Uhm, like, well, whatever!”). I’ve been told that I hide behind writing, but I like to argue that I’m simply taking full advantage of a “lost art” (and I guess it doesn’t hurt that I can write a mean essay for class).
I distinctly remember my imagination overflowing with short story ideas when I was in fourth grade. Mrs. Kadaar, my teacher at the time, encouraged me to continue my writing and built up my confidence. Ever since then I discovered that I expressed myself the best and most clear when I wrote down my emotions and thoughts.
Ideally, I do not want to just be a hard news reporter covering the daily accidents, campaigns, or crime sprees. I want to travel the world, meet interesting people, and share their unique story with the world. The ultimate dream job that encompasses all of this for me would be working at a magazine like National Geographic. Therefore, I hope this class will break away from writing in the typical dry, objective fashion and allow me to be set free a bit.
My fears are that my lack of confidence in my talent will hinder me in the future.
Also, I tend to lengthen my sentences in order to try to get my point across better. By the end of the semester I hope that I can provide a great amount of detail within a short, concise sentence. I also hope that by the end of this semester I will no longer be scared of not finding a job or not being good enough, and instead be ready to take on the world.
When it came to writing personal pieces, I have often tried to understand what other people find funny. Given the chance, which is rare since journalism is an objective art, I have been drawn to the comedy medium. An aspiration of mine includes gathering all of my misfortunate anecdotes together and to include them in book titled The Cosmic Slap.
After reading Sarah Vowell’s Take the Cannoli, this just reinforces my belief that comedy is a powerful tool, as Vowell can reconcile this comedy concept with a profound message that Disneyland maybe a nice place to visit, but the Celebration village is too sickening sweet. I would like to mimic this style, to craft my writing and make sure the reader understands the references and can relate. I have often found that I have a tendency to be convoluted with my writing.
Meanwhile I have always been interested in the works of Kafka and Vonnegut, the latter a well-known satirist of society. He is one of my favorites, particularly the book God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. Mr. Rosewater addresses a nursery of newborns “There's only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you've got to be kind.’" Like Vowell, Vonnegut knows how to poke fun but with a lasting message.
The thing that worries me about writing is running out of ideas, as I hear ‘writer’s block’ is a frequent and common occurrence. Another side note, I cling to passive sentence structure and I think it’s gotten to a point where I can’t even tell. I understand that this isn’t a grammar or similar workshop type class, but if we covered that lesson in passing, it would be appreciated.
As for journalistic heroes, I would have to say Nellie Bly as she really committed to the craft. I know it may be considered deceptive, but I’d like to uncover something as a muckraker like Bly or Upton Sinclair.
As Carol Burnett said: "Comedy is tragedy plus time."
Hello I'm Michael LaPick a fourth-year journalism major. After I graduate this spring, I would like advance in a career in magazine writing or radio. I am a musician and want to apply to that niche of magazines...like SPIN and specifically maybe a drumming magazine.
I've read some literary journalism by Hunter Thompson and Gay Talese which really influenced me to take this course this semester. Thompson, you can say, is one of my journalistic heroes. After I first read Hunter's journey to the heart of the American Dream in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, I began reading more and more of his work. I ended up buying The Great SharK Hunt, a collection of his works, and then Hell's Angels. I became addicted to his writing style and attitude.
I feel it may be hard to completely switch gears into being a subjective writer after the the rules of objectivity and invert pyramaids have been drilled into our heads. As an objective reporter you find sources and base your writing off them. As a literary writer, you are own source which brings out more creativity. I'm excited to have the chance to bring such personal reflection and creativity into my writing. This new style may be difficult for me to get used to but I'm enthuastic about learning it.
I always used to think I wanted to be a sports writer. Ever since I was a little kid, I used to wake up, grab the newspaper and read the sports page. I remember thinking I wanted to be like Bob Klapisch.
Lately however, I'm thinking news is really where I belong. I mean, I still love sports journalism and consume it at an unhealthy level, but the undeniable thrill of a late breaking story fuels my journalistic fire like nothing I've quite seen.
However, there is a trade off, I guess. Sometimes news writers are labeled as boring or bland and many times the whole 'you-can't-be-emotional-when-writing-news' thing comes up. I think that my writing could use an injection of emotion, not to sway opinions, but to add depth and substance to the sentences I write. I think the creativity of 'new journalism' will help me access parts of my writing ability that may have been hidden for a while.
If news is an important function in our society, I think it's my duty as a writer to fill it with as much depth as possible so the reader gets the best understanding of a situation that is possible. Regardless if it's sports or news, I owe my readers that much.
I published my first short story my freshman year of high school, in the school’s literary magazine ‘The Thinking Reed.’ It was called Pinwheel, and was a tragic love story inspired by the writing of Francesca Lia Block. It was pretty bad- but hey, I was fourteen.
It wasn’t until college that I stumbled upon journalism, a happy accident after I had exhausted the list of other English electives. I grew to admire the work of Hunter S. Thompson, P.J. O’Rourke and Tom Wolfe. In a different sort of way, the poetry within the prose of Anais Nin is equally as inspirational.
I love journalism because it combines writing with current events, and is more social than it is solitary- as opposed to most other writing. Plus, I have always had a strong interest in politics. I can see myself living in Washington, D.C. someday, covering national affairs. Or, perhaps, becoming a foreign correspondent and traveling the world. I want to write long, pithy political pieces for Harper’s magazine, and sit on the guest panel of Bill Maher’s ‘Realtime.’
One area where I need improvement in my writing is to focus less on how I’m saying something, and focus more on what I’m saying. I also feel, much like many of my classmates have described, that some of my creativity has been beaten out of me in exchange for monotonous uniformity in basic journalism courses. I hope that this class can help me tap back into some of that creative energy, and help me to find a balance between my personal writing style and classic news story writing.
A list of my published work can be found under the ‘portfolio’ heading at http://www.faithgimzek.wordpress.com.
As a senior in college, I can honestly say that I still have no idea what I want to do after the inevitable day of doom- graduation. I have been back and forth between areas of interest since freshman year. Between TV/ radio production, international relations, business, public relations, and even Spanish for a quick second, I always found myself enjoying the classes I was able to write in rather than the classes I had to sit and take a test in.
My first Journalism class with Rob Miraldi is what made me decide I wanted to stick it out with the Journalism/PR route. My public relations classes and my media ethics class pushed me away from PR and more towards Journalism itself.
I wanted to work for a newspaper so I decided to get an internship with the Daily Freeman where I learned great things, one of them being that I don’t want to work for a newspaper. I then decided that maybe I would try an internship with a magazine. I got the internship but decided not to take it due to financial troubles and transportation issues.
I finished the Journalism- PR concentration major and decided to try to work towards a minor in business. Why not? Last semester was the worst semester of my college experience simply because I hated all of my classes. I did not write a single paper.
Walking into this class was sincerely refreshing. I had almost forgotten what it was like to love your classes and to be genuinely excited for your assignments. And so I am back to square one. I have no idea what I want to do, but I know that it involves writing.
I am hoping that this class will help me to figure out what type of writing I want to further develop. I want to be able to identify my style of writing and develop and strengthen it. I am anticipating that by the end of this class I will have more confidence in my ability to string words together that people will enjoy reading.
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