Thursday, July 29, 2010

The Big News

So, earlier this week, I posted about doing my first celebrity interview, well, here it is! Lilith Fair is coming to the DC area next week and I got to interview Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls!

Click below to read!

Indigo Girls rejoin Lilith Fair for local stop

Monday, July 26, 2010

An Amazing Experience

Well, I just had a first.

No more than maybe 10 minutes ago, I conducted my first celebrity interview. A real celebrity, even in the mainstream media.

I was nervous as hell as I waited for my phone to ring, but the person was so laid back and made it easy for me to ask questions, but not have to do most of the talking. I'm sure this comes from their experience of being interviewed, but it was awesome nonetheless.

Now, I just have to take this interview and write a story. I almost want to keep it to myself. This is a first and it almost feels wrong to share it, but I will. Mainly because I'm being paid to, but also because I've made so many friends curious now by my tweets leading up to the interview.

I kinda wish I was going to be in town next week for the reason for the interview, but then I wouldn't be going to Atlanta, which is the better of the two.

On Friday I will post more details as well as a link to the story.

Sunday, July 18, 2010

An Update

Having such a great time at my internship. I'm writing a lot, had three bylines this week, plus the weekly calendar of events.

I'm glad I didn't give up on journalism. I was seriously considering it this past semester. I didn't think I could hack it as a real journalist, but it seems I can. I haven't gotten much feedback on my stories, some issues with the paper mean I've been having to work from home, but soon, when we get a new office, I will have more of a chance to meet with my editors about my stories but also get a chance to watch some of the behind the scenes, hopefully. I'd really like to be able to sit with our layout guy and watch him set up the paper. I took a layout class, but have never seen a real paper laid out.

On my personal writing front, I haven't done much. I found an old fanfiction I wrote, its Buffy and was started before the series ended, which tells you how old it is. Anyway, I was reading over it the other day and WOW did I suck back in the day, lol. Apparently I didn't understand the concept of tenses or not using a character's name in every single sentence. One problem that has nothing to do with my writing skills when I wrote it, I seem to have hated it so much, I deleted the file (or it just got lost in one of many computer changes). So now I am working on retyping it, making some changes and hopefully improving it along the way. I actually remember some of the ideas I had for it, so I think I might attempt to finish it. Of course, I'm saying this and I have almost 100 unfinished fanfics. I think my problem is when I start writing a story, even when I mean for it to be short, it always ends up being really long, almost uber length.

I wish I knew someone in creative writing who would read my stuff and give me some feedback. My friends read my stuff, and their opinions matter, but they're not professionals. They all like my work, but I don't know if they would tell me the truth if my work sucked. Oh well, once the new semester starts, I will be taking a creative writing class and will definitely be getting some constructive criticism. I just hope the professor at least sees potential in my writing.

I guess I should just stop dwelling on this. There's a reason why I'm in journalism and not a creative writing program. I'm more likely to find success in journalism than I would in creative writing. Also, there's not as much pressure of hoping people like my work. In journalism, I just need to keep my editor happy, if an article makes someone mad, and there are no errors in it, then I'm doing my job right.

Alrighty, well, I know my blog has now become kind of boring. I'll try to get an entertainment post in here every once in a while, maybe I'll be able to work a weekly entertainment themed post.

Anyway, if I do start posting weekly, there is one week I'll probably miss, the first week of August, because I will be on vaca in ATL visiting my best friend and her mom.

Keep cool!

OH! Btw, not long after I applied for the internship at DC Agenda, the paper was able to buy back the name Washington Blade.

Oh yea, and that's the internship I'm currently at. :0)