Oct. 3rd, 2005 12:11 am
*rubs eyes*
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textualdevianceSigh. Almost time to go to bed so I can hit the highway first thing in the morning. I've been enjoying my time here too much. But in a way, I miss my new home, too. I kinda like my apartment, even if it's lonely, because it's 100% me. Everything in it is something I've chosen purely for my own taste and use. We have similar taste most of the time, but there's just something different about something being only for me. As well, it's interesting because there's virtually none of my "past" there. It's almost all new stuff, except my clothes (and there's new stuff there, too.) So it's kind of like I'm choosing the personality I want to express without all the baggage. Should be interesting to see how I turn out after this is all said and done. And since that was part of the reason for doing this, I guess that's working out as it should.
I got my first article written yesterday. I checked it over for AP style and such, but I'm sure my editors will find things to want to correct. It's really weird to write something completely objective. Almost everything I've written before, except for brief news items, has either been created from my own brain, and is therefore subjective, or is opinion/commentary/analysis of some sort. I'm so used to having emotional passion in what I write that this new style seems hopelessly dead and dry to me, even though that's sort of how it's supposed to be. I think I have a knack for it, though. Taking a lot of different information from different sources and synthesizing it into a single expression actually seems to work well for me. It involves more note-taking than I usually do (I almost never do any pre-writing; I just start drafting and go through about five or six versions by the time I'm done.) but I'm actually finding it easy to boil down raw data into something coherent. And even concise, much to my amazement. Seems that when I'm cutting and re-shaping info and words from other people I'm much more succinct than when I'm engaging in my own brain dump. So, aside from the issues with just getting used to the specific workplace/surroundings I have, I think I really have made the right career choice.
I was also reading through one of my newswriting texts last night, and finding it amusing how there is so much info there pushing people to learn a lot about a lot of different things so it's easier to write about them. Hey, that's like my life, right there. Maybe spending 34 years fucking around doing a dozen different things actually is good preparation for writing about them all. I can write about entertainment, the arts, social issues, people, medical and technical issues, politics, economics, religion, law, geek culture, architecture, travel, cooking, pets and animals, science... pretty much everything except fashion and specific foreign and ethnic cultural things I don't have much experience with. That whole Jack of all trades, master of none thing which has been my bane may actually prove to be of great benefit in this profession. I think it will enable me to talk to a lot of different people about a lot of different things, which will make interviewing and writing stories a lot easier. I don't have to be an expert on any of these things, I just have to know enough about them to have intelligent conversations with people who are experts, so I can get their stories.
It's weird that I actually started out as a J major when I first started college, 17 years ago. My thought at the time was going into broadcast journalism, since I'd already had radio experience, and something about the way they were teaching it all at that school just rubbed me the wrong way, so I failed J 101 because I hated the instructor and stopped going to class. I picked up a theater major the next term, and never looked back. I'm not sure why I'd never seriously considered writing (fiction or non) a career in the intervening years. Maybe I just recognized that I had some weaknesses when it came to proper grammar and such. I always did well in English and reading classes, but I never got deeply into the nuts and bolts of language rules. I had no idea what a semi-colon was for until about five years ago. And I still have no idea what a subjunctive whatever is. So I guess I just thought that because my structure wasn't perfect that whatever else I could bring to communicating through text wasn't enough. Then I discovered why copy editors exist. :D. I've also made a point of trying to clean up some of my bad habits, too, though informally, I'm still lazy about things like comma splices and fragments.
Technically speaking, I feel like, if I put my mind to it, I could probably learn how to do just about anything except for maybe some really high-level science and engineering stuff. And when it comes to just learning data, instead of learning skill, I'm definitely there. I'm practically a walking encyclopedia of useless information as it is. But I've also had to face concrete limitations in some things. I've had to face the limitations of my body-- illness and otherwise-- when it comes to performing arts or sports career stuff. I had to face the limitations of my background for other things. And I've had to face practical limitations involving my age and life stage for certain things, too. But so far, it seems like journalism is one of the few things I don't have really strong barriers with. There are some, yes, but they're mostly mental ones that I can fight my way through. Getting past some of my shyness, for instance. I can polish up the writing skills. That's part of what I'm in college for, after all. And since I started taking my meds and getting proper sleep with my machine, I can concentrate long enough to be able to do the research I need to do. I may well run into something I can't get past-- one of my concerns is the issue of convergence, and the possibility that I may have to get involved in tv news even if I'm mostly writing stories, which means I again will have to face the whole physical thing. I also will have to deal with potential physical issues for some kinds of story coverage. But I think I can at least get by for now, and it feels like most of the things I need to learn how to do I have the capacity for. You may see me blathering on about what a miserable failure I am in the future, but for now, I'm hopeful, if not totally confident, that I can do this. I've gotten this far.
I got my first article written yesterday. I checked it over for AP style and such, but I'm sure my editors will find things to want to correct. It's really weird to write something completely objective. Almost everything I've written before, except for brief news items, has either been created from my own brain, and is therefore subjective, or is opinion/commentary/analysis of some sort. I'm so used to having emotional passion in what I write that this new style seems hopelessly dead and dry to me, even though that's sort of how it's supposed to be. I think I have a knack for it, though. Taking a lot of different information from different sources and synthesizing it into a single expression actually seems to work well for me. It involves more note-taking than I usually do (I almost never do any pre-writing; I just start drafting and go through about five or six versions by the time I'm done.) but I'm actually finding it easy to boil down raw data into something coherent. And even concise, much to my amazement. Seems that when I'm cutting and re-shaping info and words from other people I'm much more succinct than when I'm engaging in my own brain dump. So, aside from the issues with just getting used to the specific workplace/surroundings I have, I think I really have made the right career choice.
I was also reading through one of my newswriting texts last night, and finding it amusing how there is so much info there pushing people to learn a lot about a lot of different things so it's easier to write about them. Hey, that's like my life, right there. Maybe spending 34 years fucking around doing a dozen different things actually is good preparation for writing about them all. I can write about entertainment, the arts, social issues, people, medical and technical issues, politics, economics, religion, law, geek culture, architecture, travel, cooking, pets and animals, science... pretty much everything except fashion and specific foreign and ethnic cultural things I don't have much experience with. That whole Jack of all trades, master of none thing which has been my bane may actually prove to be of great benefit in this profession. I think it will enable me to talk to a lot of different people about a lot of different things, which will make interviewing and writing stories a lot easier. I don't have to be an expert on any of these things, I just have to know enough about them to have intelligent conversations with people who are experts, so I can get their stories.
It's weird that I actually started out as a J major when I first started college, 17 years ago. My thought at the time was going into broadcast journalism, since I'd already had radio experience, and something about the way they were teaching it all at that school just rubbed me the wrong way, so I failed J 101 because I hated the instructor and stopped going to class. I picked up a theater major the next term, and never looked back. I'm not sure why I'd never seriously considered writing (fiction or non) a career in the intervening years. Maybe I just recognized that I had some weaknesses when it came to proper grammar and such. I always did well in English and reading classes, but I never got deeply into the nuts and bolts of language rules. I had no idea what a semi-colon was for until about five years ago. And I still have no idea what a subjunctive whatever is. So I guess I just thought that because my structure wasn't perfect that whatever else I could bring to communicating through text wasn't enough. Then I discovered why copy editors exist. :D. I've also made a point of trying to clean up some of my bad habits, too, though informally, I'm still lazy about things like comma splices and fragments.
Technically speaking, I feel like, if I put my mind to it, I could probably learn how to do just about anything except for maybe some really high-level science and engineering stuff. And when it comes to just learning data, instead of learning skill, I'm definitely there. I'm practically a walking encyclopedia of useless information as it is. But I've also had to face concrete limitations in some things. I've had to face the limitations of my body-- illness and otherwise-- when it comes to performing arts or sports career stuff. I had to face the limitations of my background for other things. And I've had to face practical limitations involving my age and life stage for certain things, too. But so far, it seems like journalism is one of the few things I don't have really strong barriers with. There are some, yes, but they're mostly mental ones that I can fight my way through. Getting past some of my shyness, for instance. I can polish up the writing skills. That's part of what I'm in college for, after all. And since I started taking my meds and getting proper sleep with my machine, I can concentrate long enough to be able to do the research I need to do. I may well run into something I can't get past-- one of my concerns is the issue of convergence, and the possibility that I may have to get involved in tv news even if I'm mostly writing stories, which means I again will have to face the whole physical thing. I also will have to deal with potential physical issues for some kinds of story coverage. But I think I can at least get by for now, and it feels like most of the things I need to learn how to do I have the capacity for. You may see me blathering on about what a miserable failure I am in the future, but for now, I'm hopeful, if not totally confident, that I can do this. I've gotten this far.
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no subject
Hope it's all right if I come in now and then, just to say hi and so on...
Lea
no subject
Yeah, I've been really wrapped up in all this school stuff, now. I'm enjoying it. It means I have no more time for fannish stuff (what little I'm paying attention to these days is on my new journal:
*heh*
Re: *heh*