My Ten Tweets and Analysis

I hate Twitter. There isn't much else to be said about this website for me. I don't care if it's going to be the next Facebook, I don't care how convenient it is or how the technology is going to revolutionize online media, I. DON'T. CARE. That is me ranting, and I apologize (Scott) for being so blunt but I just had to get it out there. Twitter is annoying and stupid and whatever benefits people might get from it the idiocy it generates far outweighs them. That being said, using Twitter to "tweet" (urgh) about my final project didn't really help me very much. I expected my class to respond, to be right there tweeting away about their own mishaps and maybe giving some advice or whatever, but I was tweeting into a void. It was quite lonely, I have to say. I didn't need to throw out the issues I was having, or the progress I was making, because I already knew what was going on with my final, and no one else needed to. If they did, it certainly didn't seem that way. I understand the importance of writing down your creative process, but I don't think Twitter worked for me in this case.

Here are my ten TWEETS:

Will be posting my final this afternoon or tonight. Success! That's one less thing to stress about at least #wftw less than 10 seconds ago from web
Delete
e-mailed Scott to ask about youtube. That's an okay for me, which is good news. Too bad I'm at the library and my footage is at home! #wftw 2 minutes ago from web
Delete
so my video is only 15 seconds long..is that bad? there are three that i want to upload but they would have to be watched separately:/ #wftw 12 minutes ago from web
Delete
is it okay if we upload our video to youtube and then embed it into our masslive post? anyone? #wftw about 14 hours ago from web
Delete
my video has uploaded as a quicktime file. gonna be honest and say i have no idea where to go from here. uh oh. #wftw about 15 hours ago from web
Delete
the article's complete, now I just need to upload the video. I think I'll incorporate some photos too, just to be safe #wftw about 18 hours ago from web
Delete
just finished my interview for project number 2. i have a handy mp3 recorder so i feel like a real reporter! #wftw about 20 hours ago from web
Delete
also, no idea how i'm going to edit this! way more complicated than i thought #wftw about 23 hours ago from web
Delete
kind of sucks that the english society meeting i recorded was a bunch of horsing around. gotta work with it #wftw about 23 hours ago from web
Delete
i have my video for the project, but do we need pictures for it as well? #wftw

One More Referential Post

My third post on Masslive for this final week is going to be another referential post. But, it isn't an article I'll be refering to. I'm going to post a video I recently stumbled upon from www.ted.com, a really awesome website that has thousands of clips of talks and lectures by the most brilliant minds all around the world. It's like taking an intellectual bath when you browse that website. Anyway, I found a great video of the poet C.K. Williams reading his poetry to the TED crowd, and I thought it would be cool to post the video and blog about it.

Check out ted.com if you have the time, I guarantee you'll end up spending at least an hour watching these fascinating videos.

The Calm Before the Storm

I can't believe this is the last week of classes. I can't believe this is the last week I'll be stressing out about blogging!!! I'm honestly going to miss it; this class has, though I resisted almost every step of the way, taught me a lot about the online world of media and how blogging (a word I never wanted to use as a verb, ever) is a big part of it. I enjoy rambling about english and poetry and events that I go to and hear about around Amherst, and knowing that anyone out there on the web could stumble across my musings. It's fun.

I think, aside from my second project for Writing for the Web that I already have outlined, I'm going to post to Masslive about upcoming literary events in the Spring, and how it's fun and easy to attend them and make the most out of the literary scene here in Western Massachusetts. I think I can flesh that out a lot and make it into a decent article.

Aside from that, I'm just really trying to get through this second project. For some reason, it's more challenging to me than the others that we've been assigned. Maybe I'm just putting up mental blocks because of the whole video thing we have to incorporate. This is definitely the most high-tech thing I've ever done for school. We'll see how it turns out!

Masslive Masslive Masslive!!!

AHHHH!!!!! I never know what to write about for my Masslive posts. Ever. It's like, I have Thursdays where I go to meetings for English Society and then a reading, and that's it. This Thursday was Thanksgiving! I couldn't bear to step foot inside my high school after all that, so I didn't get the scoop on whether or not there even is a literary journal there anymore. I guess that's fine, since it didn't relate to my beat being in and around Amherst...

I'm thinking for this week's posts I'll put together an article that talks about why literary journals are important for the undergraduate community here at UMass. There are three that I know of: Ellipsis, which is a freshman literary journal run by students in Butterfield; Shortcuts, which is a journal composed of undergraduate short fiction; and of course, Jabberwocky, which is mostly poetry but some short fiction too.

I think I'll do another referential article as well, because those are kind of fun and I like researching my beat on the web.

Project #2 Outline

For my second project for Writing for the Web, I plan to do a follow-up piece on the article I wrote on English Society and the UMass undergraduate literary journal "Jabberwocky." The article is going to focus on the selection and publication process of the journal. Although it is early in the year for an annual publication, I'm going to ask Soo Bee Murray and some of the other returning members to outline the events that are being planned to fundraise and what it will take to actually put the journal together. At this Thursday's meeting, I am going to bring my camera which also records video to take photos. I am going to use the video to interview some of the members and ask what the selection process is like for them as individuals and how they think English Society works as a whole.

It should be fun, I'm going to talk to Soo Bee about it after class on Wednesday. Maybe it will motivate ES to really get moving!

Writer's Block

I'm having a lot of trouble coming up with another idea for my MassLive blog. There's a Visiting Writers reading next Thursday in Memorial Hall, which I will write about, but as of right now...I just don't know. Can I do another list? Is that okay? What would it even be on? I feel like I've hit a wall. Maybe I should have thought about it earlier, but I was so absorbed in my article on Charles Simic that I wasn't really thinking about the fact that I should have at the very least two MassLive posts by the time class starts tonight. Ahhh!

This is really just me brainstorming. What could be good enough to post on there that won't take a few days to research and complete? Since I have about an hour and a half at this point...

I was thinking of doing something humorous...maybe writing about how to not write a poem. But who am I to pass judgement that way? I don't think any of the poetry I write is good. I can't just go publish my amateur opinions on a blog that a lot of people in this community read. I'm quite stuck. Maybe I could do a post about my two favorite poets? Naruda and e.e. cummings. But I never quite know how to write about what I like about poetry. There are only so many adjectives you can use before you begin to sound trite.

Well...here it goes. I'll think of something...I hope.

Home, Finally

So, I'm going to be headed home for Thanksgiving break. The first time since I left for the school year. I'm pretty excited, mostly because I might be able to crash some of the community's artsyfartsy happenings around town and maybe even blog about them...get kind of an island perspective on what I've been writing about all semester. Who knows what the high school and the theater community are up to at the moment. It will be fun to drop in on my old haunting grounds and look at it with a completely different eye.

Back here on campus, English Society is going as well as can be expected. It's fun to go to those meetings, because everyone wants to go to the readings that happen afterwards every Thursday. But it's also frustrating, because there are so many submissions to go through and we never have enough time. I realize Jabberwocky is an annual publication so we do have the rest of the year, but it worries me that the selection process is taking so long. Ah well...

The Visiting Writers Series is really fascinating this year. I think it's because I'm looking at it as a collective whole now instead of just a few random events that happen on this vast campus. The English Department is really on top of things. I think they could do a better job publicizing these events, because I kind of have to hunt for the dates and times and often miss some readings all together, but the calendar line-up is so full it almost doesn't matter. Almost.