first post!

Over the course of the summer, in between yelling at the high school kids I supervised to "do some goddamned work," and flipping burgers on the flat grill at my near-minimum wage job, I had a lot of time to ponder my last upcoming college semester. Followed by graduation. Accompanied with anxiety.

It's occurred to me that the vast majority of nonfiction writing I've consumed lately has involved critical thinking about political developments in Africa and the Middle East, or has managed to take a broad topic, like gossip, and tease out four separate, compelling, and unified stories out of it. They've been podcasts and blogs and posts from news sites online, often accompanied by various multimedia, and linking to further information at other parts of the web.

The kind of writing that's made me want to read it has (mostly) had nothing to do with physical print, nor has it been content with mere memoirs and personal narratives. Discouragingly, that's precisely the direction my writing classes have taken - little to no outside reporting, and no web presence at all.

I'd like to do the kind of nonfiction writing that makes me interested enough to read - the kind that goes out and finds stories in the fascinating or the mundane, the known or the obscure. I'm bored enough with the stories coming out of my own head, so I can't imagine how a real reader might feel. So one of my goals is to practice real reporting in my writing - something I haven't really done since freshman year Intro to Journalism.

Having realized that I primarily consume writing via electronic means, namely the internet, and having seen job listings that require extensive knowledge and/or experience within the digital realm, my second goal for this semester is to become proficient in integrating my writing with technology. Specifically I'm interested in working on integrating embedded media (pictures, sound, YouTube videos, links to other sources of information) into my essays and work to create a fuller experience.

Two of my favorite nonfiction writers write now are Christopher Hitchens and Ira Glass. With Hitchens, I admire the sort of old-school Fleet Street journalism techniques in his writing - everything he writes about gives me the impression that he's done so much research he's now a veritable expert on the subject. At least, he writes so forcefully and with so much conviction that it certainly feels that way. And I particularly admire the way he integrates that reporting with personal insight. With regards to Ira Glass, well, every time I listen to This American Life I'm absolutely floored by the stories that seem to come out of nowhere. They're engaging to the point of being almost addictive, separate yet subtly woven together, introduced well in the beginning of the program and tied up neatly at the very end. I also admire the program because it's a great example of nonfiction writing in an entirely different medium. (I realize that the program is written by many authors, but it seemed convenient to use Glass as the figurehead.)

So there it is: my reasons, my goals, the examples I want to follow.