writer [rahy-ter] : a person engaged in writing books, articles, stories, etc., especially as an occupation or profession; an author or journalist.
Good afternoon!
It is November 1st! And that means the start of National Novel Writing Month, aka NaNoWriMo!
This year is the first year I’m participating, and lo and behold I’ve just written my first sentence! A breeze. Thousands more to go I’m afraid.
NaNoWriMo has participants write every day, from Nov. 1- Nov. 30 and complete 50,000 words. A novel!
So I am not going to drabble on, since my goal is to hit about 2,000 words today and I’ve got… 27.
So I’ll bid you adieu!
A funny yet cynical journalist page I follow on Facebook posted this highly useful resource list. I know about a bunch of the ones on the list but would like to share with you the completed list of media resources. I think tomorrow I will spend most of the gleaning all the good I can from these pages. This will inevitably turn into a multi-day thing, so I will be updating constantly with my new finds and my thoughts.
Here’s the page and if you have any others that are not listed there, please comment below!
http://journalismdegree.org/new-media/
P.S: I am also participating in NaNoWriMo this year! If you’d like to be friends there, contact me!
I’m writing this a few minutes before midnight while it’s still 9/22, so forgive me if I use the word ‘today’ and this is posted on 9/23.
I woke up early to a beautiful Sunday morning which I haven’t done in quite some time. I nibbled on cookies for breakfast and than ventured out into the sunshine. I filled up my gas tank, witnessed two car crashes, and got my first massage. It was a present from my sister for my birthday a few weeks ago and I just got around to making the appointment for today.
Since I’ve never been to a masseuse I didn’t know what proper etiquette was. My masseuse was named Bree and after a few minutes of feeling vulnerable nearly naked in front of a stranger I came to a relaxed state. I had begun the session worrying what she was thinking about all my imperfections. But her hands were reading the knotted lines on my body. I could feel through her gentle hands a grimace. Maybe she was sad that I had all these knots and scars that could not be seen. I am young but not young in the mind. She could tell.Her hands were warm and I trusted them.
Amanda Palmer is a musician, and she recently had a TED talk. In that talk, she spoke about her time as a living statue performing on the street. When she would hand someone a flower, she connected with them. She saw them.
I think Bree read me the same way Palmer saw people. I stopped caring whether she thought I had bad skin or not. Her ultimate goal was to make me feel empowered again, physically and spiritually. She turned back the years on a mind that was beginning to wither away.
The rest of my day was nothing out of the normal. I returned home and had some lunch and then visited Barnes and Noble. I bought A Casual Vacancy and The Lovely Bones after two hours of meandering the stacks of books. I came close to buying The Gravity of Birds but I think I’ll save that for next time. There’s a pile of books that beckon me to read them already.
The next few hours I enjoyed a pumpkin spice latte and the company of a really good book, American Gods by Neil Gaiman. There’s a part in the book I just reached about the Holocaust and slave trade that really rattled me and I didn’t get too far after that. But I enjoyed the crisp fall air, the tough pages of a book, and hours to reflect on the impact the words had on my life.
After dinner I went out to get drinks with a few friends. One of my best friends just came back from a work trip in Europe. I am so proud of her accomplishments, it is so hard to be successful in our chosen career paths (she’s a photographer).
When I got home, my dad was in from work. He seemed tired but it ended up being grief. A coworker of his passed way in a car accident earlier that morning. His coworker had just got off shift and was leaving work, and not even a block away from the parking lot he was hit by a truck. My dad was very upset and started to ramble off about his coworkers wife and children. It was very heartbreaking.
For the better part of the day I felt uplifted and spirited. And even though today was generally no different from my other Sundays, it was beautiful.
Hello all,
A brief reminder that my writing samples (I hate the term ‘samples’, they’re full published works!) are under the Featured Publications page. Pretty soon I’ll have a page up for self-published work.
So we find ourselves at the end of another summer. It’s a humid day here in New York, but rather than the balminess that usually accompanies this awful form of heat it’s complemented by a nice breeze. I enjoy these moments, sitting at my computer, listening to the ticking of the ceiling fan, the speeding cars on the main street I live on, and the occasional visit from my cat. Summer rolls, from heatwaves to thunderstorms, it’s a time of easy living. It reminds me of the two weeks I spent in Europe my senior year of high school. I learned more about the pleasure of a simplistic life than I have in my entire life. Summer is coming to a close, but just because we sip on pumpkin spice lattes and snuggle into wooly sweaters doesn’t mean we don’t have to stop our enjoyment and zest for life.
Hope you all enjoy the last few days of summer, autumn will be here soon. And life goes on…
My brother, the computer genius, is in town and did some tinkering on the back-end of my WordPress. Finally it is easier to use and allows me to manuever more on the site. While my knowledge of WordPress is functional, I definitely needed a re-instruction on a few parts.
I’ve definitely been checking out different outlets to write for. There’s a story in my head that I’ve been trying to get down for weeks but every time I sit down with a pad of paper the thoughts evade me. I may have to turn to my app Dragon Dictation to get it down for me. Sometimes just speaking out loud unfilitered and unhinged is the best way to extract ideas. Dragon Dictation is a pretty good app for that. It converts speech into text, although not perfectly accurate, and you do have to speak slower (I’m a NYer it’s hard to slow down and keep my thoughts afloat), it saves time and protects artistic liberty.
I’m also working on branding myself, creating a logo and template that really describes the essence of who I am and the talent I have to offer. I have a few designs in mind but nothing has come to fruition, I’ll keep you all informed with how it comes along.
So tonight something interesting happened in this little college town. I was scrolling through my Facebook news feed and what do you know pops up?
Someone posted about heavy police activity in town.
Their post read as:
“On my way to the deli in town, I saw 4 police cars, 2 fire trucks, and the trailways on Main street. I think someone got hit!! :O:”
This was posted just around midnight. And I had seen it about 25 minutes after it was posted. So I decided to check Twitter and there were two tweets about it.
The most interesting Tweet was:
“What is happening in New Paltz? Helicopters, 7 police cars, and ambulance and a women screaming outside the middle school. WHAT’S GOING ON?”
So I decided to go into town to investigate. While I was putting on clothes (I was in pajamas at this time) I could hear a helicopter outside, to me that was a confirmation.
It took me about 15 minutes to walk into town. When I got to the area by the aforementioned Middle School and the Deli (Convenient Deli) it was bone quiet. Nothing was stirring. No police activity. Convenient is 24 hours, so I went inside and asked the cashier if he had seen or heard anything. He said someone either got hit by a bus or had a heart attack on it. Either way they were airlifted to a hospital. He also gave me the interesting fact that a drug sniffing dog was brought in.
Luckily, I had bumped into my roommate in the deli, who dropped me off back to the dorm. I proceeded to call the bus company but they shut they closed at midnight. I then called the town police. I explained what I heard about the activity and the officer on the end of the line, clearly annoyed and angered said, “We don’t give out that kind of information on the phone.” I didn’t want to deal with an irate officer so I hung up without pressing any further. You can bend my back but not break it.
So now what do I do? I’ve written down my timeline of events and what I know. I have to go to the bus station tomorrow anyway to take a bus home for the weekend and I plan on doing some more snooping.
What more could I have done?
I had to write a tragedy article for a class last semester, so I chose my dad. Obviously I can’t publish it but I thought it would be nice to share.
Enjoy!
________
by Laura Cerrone
Angelo Cerrone does not like to remember his near-death experience 35 years ago. So much so, his wife barely knew it even happened.
In 1976, Cerrone was 22 years old, working for the aviation service company Allied at John F. Kennedy International Airport in Jamaica, Queens. He was assigned to troubleshoot a company bus that would not turn on. Cerrone recalls the only other person was the bus driver, one with no knowledge on fixing a vehicle.
“I troubleshooted the vehicle and it still wouldn’t start, the battery was okay, so I knew the problem was elsewhere.” said Cerrone.
He proceeded to inspect the undercarriage of the vehicle. He had instructed the driver to stay in the driver’s seat with the bus in park and his foot on the brake. Cerrone remembers the moment the bus turned on – and suddenly it began to move, dragging him underneath as the driver pulled away.
“It was a burning pain. It was like a hot rash. Like I was set on fire.”
Cerrone gripped onto the bus’ chassis. “If I were to let go I would’ve been run over.”
He was dragged almost 20 feet before his screams were heard by the driver. In a matter of minutes an ambulance arrived and took the young man to Peninsula General Hospital.
For Cerrone this could have been the end to his life, or the end to his dreams working in the airline industry. As a young boy, Cerrone grew up in post-World War II rural Italy. He lived on a farm where he shared a room with four other siblings, and used an outhouse. When his father brought him home a broken bike, Cerrone fixed it. When he moved to the United States at 13, he saw opportunity all around him, the biggest of all was working for the airline industry, because to him there was nothing more powerful and magnificent than an airplane.
Cerrone had sustained lacerations running up and down his back, internally he was miraculously unscathed.
While physically he healed with a few days in the hospital and several weeks off work, he wasn’t emotionally ready to take on his job again.
Cerrone turned to a friend of his mothers named Marisa Schiavello, Schiavello specializes in spiritual prayer healing. While Cerrone attended his regular doctor check-ups to check for possible infection he also sought sessions with Schiavello. Schiavello and Cerrone’s mother would swaddle him in bandages and then pray to God for him to heal.
“Emotionally it helped, made me feel that God was on my side because I wasn’t killed.”
Cerrone now lives in a house he worked years to build with a wife and three kids, a cat, and two bunnies. He still works for the airline industry at American Airlines where he gets to watch airplanes take off and land, still fascinating his inner-childlike awe.
Cerrone reflects on everything he has now and imagines it could of all been very different.
“The scariest thing about this ordeal is that I thought it was the end of my life.”
I’m currently working on an article about women who drastically change their appearance/cut their hair following a break-up or other traumatic experience. I’ve done two interviews so far and am finding out really interesting information. A lot of it is what I anticipated but other information is new and gives a depth about people and their coping abilities.
I really can’t wait to write it and file it and post it on here! I definitely want to accompany it with a post about the process.
I love this new layout, and I think it will be something I can handle.
Especially with how full my semester will be. I’m taking six classes, 17 credits worth. I’m also on the e-board in two clubs. Not to mention I go to the gym and try to have a bit of a social life.
I just got done with my first week of classes for the new semester. One my classes starts next week so I haven’t been to all of them.
My classes are:
Text Me! – This class is about computer mediated communication. I’ve found this topic really interesting especially with my fascinaition (and addiction) to social media. But now I get to learn the history of all of it, like how the Justice Department and ARPANET are two major factors in me being able to write this on my laptop.
Literature of Journalism – My professor speaks the truth in this class. Literary journalism is something I’ve never had the chance to do, and it will be fun to add a flair of creativity to personal narratives while social commentating the way I see things. Love it already.
Arts Writing – Writing about music, film, art, dance, theater… and the whole rest of the gambit. My professor was a editor of the Rolling Stones magazine. Cannot wait for her anecdotal stories and report on some of my biggest interests with integrity and the tools I need.
Investigative Journalism – Probably my favorite so far. Taught by a New York Times reporter, I learned more in the first class than I ever did before. This was the perfect class to take, I can’t wait to take the knowledge I gain and translate it into real impactful stories.
Advanced Editing – This class runs an online newspaper. We are in charge of everything, assigning the stories, editing, fact-checking… we’re pretty self-efficient. Getting a taste of ‘the real thing’ should brace me with a little more backbone for actual (and virtual) newsrooms.
Intercultural Interaction – This is the class I start next week and have once a week for seven consecutive weeks. It’s my one credit modular course and all I know is that I will be working on some sort of project that involves a student from a foreign university. Sounds pretty exciting, pretty stoked!
So, with all that said, most of these classes are upper division. Which means the workload is…is… scary. I’m looking at my homework list from this first week and don’t know how I will pull it altogether
Currently writing a paper on the court case Branzburg v. Hayes. I never knew how much reading there was to do in a court case. Sunday bummer!
The case is very interesting though. If you’re not familiar with it, it is the Supreme Court case that allows courts to subpoena journalists to reveal their sources. I think the 35 year gap is also astounding. Thirty-five years ago courts were always subpoenaing journalists to reveal their sources, and it died down after that until present day where it has started back up again. I think it shows how the 70s and present day have linear circumstances.
Subpoena is also a really cool word.