Currently I’m working on a 5,000 word non-fiction piece for a journalism contest and to make sure that the piece is not a rambling piece of shit, I workshopped it in my Advanced Non-fiction class.

Workshops used to intimidate me, but now after years of school I’ve developed a leathery thick skin. However, most of the pieces I workshop for school are last minute (but thoughtful) pieces that I convince myself I don’t care about to make sure that I’m not bruised by any criticisms. (Okay, so maybe my skin is less leathery and more plushy). This piece is different because I am emotionally invested in it.

I took Oprah’s advice and used writing as a tool for catharsis, culminating in the piece: Confessions of a Token Black Girl. It’s about my ridiculous experiences as one of the few and sometimes only black girl in various towns in Wisconsin. The idea was birthed out of my social awkwardness. At parties or intimidating first meeting, I would use the stories of my experiences with racism (framed humorously) as an ice breaker. And whaddya know, it worked! People couldn’t believe that a girl in high school asked me to rap when she first met me or that Peruvians mistook me for Michelle Obama in 2009. Many people told me to write these stories down, but it wasn’t until a long chat with a tech reporter that I decided to act on that suggestion. When I started writing the piece, it was more difficult than I imagined it would be. Because, although I frame these experiences humorously in real life and in text, they still scarred me, especially because these experiences and hate crimes occurred when I was just 10 years old.

To be very cliche, I was thrusting myself out there, naked and vulnerable for my peers to criticize. And they loved it, they really loved it. Of course the piece isn’t perfect yet, but I am comforted by their warm reception especially because they are all white people. Not that I was catering the piece to white people. In fact, my teacher pointed out that I was calling white people out on their bullshit. But others remarked that I wrote in a way that was digestible and benevolent. I’m not looking to be the next bell hooks, but am aiming for A Chappelle Show-esque writing style from the point of view from an awkward black girl.

As a working writer, rejection is omnipresent. But having something that is personal and important to me congratulated (they actually clapped me) is the kind of encouragement that reassures me that I’m on the right path.

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We were first mistaken for the Obamas in the main square in Cusco. We were doing some tepid sightseeing as a group when Peruvians started pointing and whispering amongst themselves. We thought it was odd, but being obvious tourists, we paid no mind to the attention. Then a woman approached Stan, asking for his autograph. She was exuberant that President Obama was in town. Soon a crowd swarmed Stan and me. People were grabbing at us, pushing pen and paper in our faces. Our group decided to go along with it. A couple of jocks joked around about being CIA and made sure people kept a reasonable distance. After the afternoon was over we made about 20 american bucks from the pictures and autographs. Okay, that was a lie. We didn’t exploit the Peruvians by charging money because we are not horrible people and American corporations do enough of that kind of thing already. But it was very tempting.

Later that day I was going to a discotheca with a friend. A little boy who was obviously living on the street approached me. I thought he was going to beg for some money, but what he proposed was much more bizarre. He came up to me in his thick accent and said, “Michelle Obama, Michelle Obama, Quiere cocaina?” It was not that he was offering me cocaine, it was that, upon meeting the First Lady his first thought was to sell her cocaine.

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Check out my LinkedIn profile and get access to my accomplishments.

Follow me on Twitter and a bird will come to your window.

“Like” me on Facebook and we will be forever connected by blue blood.

On this blog/website I have a page dedicated to detailing my experience with social media and how I can help people and businesses navigate various platforms. I realize that social media marketers can come across as robots constantly spewing buzzwords like SEO, consumer engagement, organic conversation and ROI that hardly make any sense or translate to social media’s concrete benefits. So I thought it would be helpful to know what attracted me to work in social media in the first place. It’s not just about marketing for marketing’s sake for me. Truth be told, I really love social media.

Connects me with my international family–My family members reside on five out of the seven continents which used to mean expensive phone bills. Now, I can communicate with them for free on Skype, Facebook , Google Hangout or text them on WhatsApp.
Great resource for jobs and networking–It used to be that applying for jobs was a slow and painful process. Now, NPR posts jobs on Twitter. This is great for them, because they don’t have money for recruiters or fancy marketing. Yet, Twitter is just as effective at getting them great job candidates. My favorite professional tool is LinkedIn. Not only can you monitor a companies’ hiring practices by following them, but you can see how you’re connected to a company you want to work for. There have been so many times that LinkedIn showed me that a random relative that I met at that one reunion had the hook up with an established company. But, just because the tools are virtual, doesn’t mean that there aren’t protocols and standards. Something I will cover in a future blog post.
Great for sharing ideas–I am a proud introvert that sometimes enjoys the company of other people. As a creative, I often revel in the excitement that arises from good face-to-face collaboration and I also dread the mindless dribble that can leak out out of bad collaboration. Tools like Google Hangout, Skype and Google Docs help me on all fronts. They allow me to interact with people in my own space, meaning I can be all made up on top while wearing my apple pie boxershorts (they do exist) on bottom, skip out on inane pleasantries, use the handy mute button when things get bad and feign a bad signal when I want out. Also, using Google Docs with other people is the trippiest thing ever.
Great tool for human observation, helpful to me as a writer–Facebook and Twitter has normalized stalking thoughtful people monitoring. I love to people watch and sometimes watching someone breakdown on Twitter is almost as amusing and beneficial to me as a writer as writing down descriptions of interesting characters in Union Square park.  The former strengthens my cultural awareness and the latter is a practice that not only gets fresh air in my lungs, but helps me sketch out complete characters as well.
Companies can be like your best friend and that’s awesome–I talked about how you can follow companies on LinkedIn, but Facebook and Twitter are the best tools that humanize companies effectively. This is great for them, because it increases band loyalty. And it’s beneficial to consumers because there are so many choices when it comes to products nowadays that choosing the one with the most humorous or inspiring tweets and posts is a lot easier than using a magic 8 ball.

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Check out my LinkedIn profile and get access to my accomplishments.

Follow me on Twitter and a bird will come to your window.

“Like” me on Facebook and the Smurfs will dance at your next party.

Today in Articles That Come Out Every Eight Weeks Just Long Enough For People to Forget That This Has Been Written About For Centuries, one of the most esteemed journalists of our time (just ask him) who works for a media company that propels and profits off the very thing he criticizes, wrote the article “Journalism Is Not Narcissism.” In this article he condemns the recent practice (which is not recent at all) of journalists of the youthful kind who think that journalism is all about their messy breakups, quirky cats and drug addictions. Before I do the inevitable and succumb to the ailment that plagues my generation of writers and journalists and segue into anecdotes from the drivel that is my life (which I can do since this is my blog), I must say that I agree with him on some things  one thing.

It is appalling that teacher Susan Shapiro’s signature assignment for her young journalism students is a humiliating tell-all essay “because they want to publish essays and sell memoirs.” That kind of exercise is reserved for creative non-fiction classes. But Nolan uses her as the impetus to rant against the way journalism is being taught. It’s funny. In my journalism classes I wouldn’t be able to write an Op-Ed generalizing a whole academic institution based on one quote from one teacher. Instead, I would get edits back saying: “MORE EVIDENCE NEEDED. BACK UP CLAIMS” or “SAVE THIS FOR YOUR BLOG.”

Perhaps, it is the fault of Nolan’s education, not recognizing that he is doing exactly what he is denouncing. In my journalism program our teachers understand the state of the profession today and do their best to equip us with the multi-media skills necessary to enter the workforce. For today’s young journalists a notebook and pen coupled with a relentless drive is not enough anymore. We need to be more than competent photographers, coders, videographers, live tweeters, storify-ers and, most of all, we need to be a fully functioning brand. Applications for internships and entry level jobs ask to see your LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook page and your chances of getting the 40 hr/week unpaid internship increase if you have a blog you update consistently.

Maybe Nolan is confused. I’ve never considered the sites he pointed out as the failing of my generation’s journalistic education as actual journalism. They are entertainment. Part of a nice sub-genre, birthed through the Internet, that helps young writers get some exposure and well-needed practice. I know it helps me get exposure and practice. Right now I blog for money and I practice journalism for free. Perhaps Nolan does not know the difference between the two.

There’s a difference between a blog and literary journalism. A blog is what you’re reading right now. There are no rules. I can experiment with my writing style, post my drawings of pot smoking unicorns, whatever. Literary journalism or literary non-fiction (which I think is an underrated genre) is Notes of A Native Son by James Baldwin, Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace and Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion. It is profiles like this. It is different from hard news, but there’s a structure to it and there are rules. Facts need to be present (although these writers have taken liberties on that, especially David Foster Wallace) and ethics need to be upheld. And it happens to be my favorite genre of writing because it is so damn entertaining and informative. And the writers I most admire engaged in this genre and wrote some of their best work in this genre. Maybe I should email him my class reading lists if he is still convinced that we are ALL being taught to be tawdry memoirists.

Hunter S. Thompson wrote about his drug and sex-laced life and so did Norman Mailer. And it was entertaining as hell. Maybe my generation is not doing it well. But that’s what happens when you live in the information age and don’t have strict word requirements, have to fit within certain margins and don’t need to suck up to X advertiser. There is more shit to sort through to get to the good stuff. We can’t all be Mailers. But denying that there is good stuff is the greatest crime of this article. When I saw the title I thought it was going to be a cogent look at the way we tell stories, not another one of these “Back in my day” articles.

What is on blogs today (and yes, Slate, Gawker, and xoJane are all blogs, not shining beacons of young journalism) is not a reflection of my generation’s journalists. For that you would have to talk to one my colleagues who was an overnight embedded reporter in the Cooper Union protest (where we got to break the story before any New York paper, I might add). You would have to talk to another colleague that was trampled on reporting on the Occupy protests last spring. Or the young interns at CBS, NBC and ABC transcribing for the news reels that Gawker writers watch and rewrite with added snark to publish as “today’s gossip.” 

The same students with sizable debt and two jobs just so they can take those unpaid internships, because they know it will help them reach their career goals. But I guess that’s not controversial or snarky enough for a blog writer (Yes, I’m dissing myself, a fellow blog writer. Part of my motivation for writing this article was being tired of seeing people shit on my generation for pageviews. I wanted to respond and let my voice be heard through my own blog. And it hasn’t escaped my mind that responding to a popular article might get me some exposure. But at least I know the difference between what I am doing now, blogging, and if I were to write this as a journalistic critique for a newspaper or digital publication. If it were the latter it would be less ranty and I wouldn’t be calling him out so directly).

I would also like to point out that if I wrote Nolan’s article for a journalism class, the edits I would get back would say: “PROPOSE A SOLUTION. STOP BEING SO RANTY.” It’s one thing to point out a problem with this and this of my generation, but it’s a cop out to not offer an alternative. Okay, so we are all Lena Dunhams and “robotic insta-memoirists,” what do you propose we do instead? Like I said before, it is very hard for a young journalist to get their foot in the door without any web presence and writing those love and sex columns and whiny hipster articles for Thought Catalog help us get clips in an industry that is over saturated and underpaid. But we as young journalists know the difference between Thought Catalog articles and journalism. Instead of being another added negative voice to this volatile profession, try to be a part of the solution. Use your mighty linking powers, honed oh so well at Gawker, to showcase The Digital Storymakers Award. Unlike you, it is doing its part to give a shit about young journalists instead of shitting on them.

Like my 80 year old classics professor who spent the entire last semester chastising us for not listening to enough opera and not reading enough obscure Russian classicists, Nolan’s critique dates him and is trite. He oversimplifies the reality of what it is to be a young journalist, sparking enough controversy to get him those lucrative pageviews and fool the readers into thinking that he is an authority on the subject. As a 20 something who is deemed too hipster and addicted to irony by many writers over 30 these days, I appreciate that Nolan decided to bring things down to my meme-filled Instagram-filtered level by engaging in self-parody while parodying the platform he writes for. A Gawker writer critiquing self-referential writing. What an ironic commentary! I get it! I get the reference! Now excuse me while I play my vintage Sega console in my mom’s basement while my friends write ebooks for Thought Catalog on their typewriters, listening to the latest Britney Spear’s single on vinyl and wearing their obnoxious Cosby sweaters. What can I say. We’re in our 20s. We just can’t help ourselves.

Disclosure: I enjoy reading Gawker and read it often, but this article just pissed me off. I actually submitted an essay for their Saturday series which I particularly enjoy. But don’t think this is an embittered rejected writer getting her shots. Know that, while I will comment on Gawker and any other publishing platform that I think crosses the line, I still respect what they do. Because of them many writers can get exposure. And because of them the need to know what kind of mom Kim Kardashian will be is about to be satiated within the next nine months.

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Check out my LinkedIn profile and get access to my accomplishments.

Follow me on Twitter and a bird will come to your window.

“Like” me on Facebook and we will be forever connected by blue blood.

(Image courtesy of Danielle Small’s genius final project)

For one of my finals I made a mock magazine profile of Michele de Montaigne, originator of the essay format a.k.a my reason for living a.k.a my hero. If you have not read Essays, I strongly urge it especially if you are a writer or a lover of words. You also have no excuse because I gave you the link. My prof said I could get creative with this final which is code word for me to get experimental. Luckily, I attend The New School so guidelines aren’t so strict and my imagination can go to places I never thought it would in academia. In this 20 page profile of Montaigne I mused what it would be like if Montaigne had a blog. It went a little something like this…

If Montaigne existed today and had a blog, I think it would be like this. Background information: Kim Kardashian is a celebrity made infamous by her sex tape with R&B singer Ray J. Consequently, she received her own reality television show: Keeping Up With the Kardashians which is one of the most popular reality shows existing today. She recently dated and then married NBA player, Kris Humphries. Their marriage lasted 72 days and through television specials and re-runs of their televised wedding, she received  17.9 million dollars. Some call her an entrepreneur, others call her a gold digger.

December  14, 2012

Montaigne’s Blog

I’m just an ordinary man trying to figure life out…

Of Kim Kardashian’s Vanity and Reality TV

And yet I saw, some years ago, a person, whose name and memory I have in very great disdain, Kim Kardashian. In the very height of our great disorders, when there was neither law nor justice, no more than there is now, publish I know not who or what thought it was a good idea for her to marry Kris Humphries. The Kardashians are not amusements wherewith to feed a people, a people rapidly plunging deeper into degenerate living with each second watched of that wretched show. Those others do the same, who insist upon prohibiting particular ways of speaking, dances, and games, to a people totally abandoned to all sorts of execrable vices. I am talking about Honey Boo Boo and all the people who broadcast publicly their daily idleness. You too, Teen Mom. Kim Kardashian, there is, peradventure, no more manifest vanity than to get a show because of a sex tape and then fake a marriage for 17.9 million dollars. That which divinity has so divinely expressed to us ought to be carefully and continually meditated by understanding men. In other words, Kim Kardashian,  reduce yourself into obscurity and start reading books.

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Check out my LinkedIn profile and get access to my accomplishments.

Follow me on Twitter and a bird will come to your window.

(My own sophisticated illustration of my relationship with writing).

In one of my classes we are constantly asking ourselves why we write and I haven’t been able to come up with a good reason. Lately, I have been writing like it is going out of style. I don’t care if I’m in class or I’m having lunch with someone, my writing has become a compulsion and my go-to coping mechanism. I need to write. I’ve always needed to write, but now I feel that if I don’t write I will not survive. If I don’t write life is futile. It has everything to do with the insane amount of stress I have been enduring lately (Financial worries. What else would it be?). This stress has forced me to delve deep into my being and has resulted in the writing work ethic I have been yearning to have. I’ve never really enjoyed the writing process (the end result is what I normally look forward to), but now it’s the high that keeps me going. Anyway, here is a list of the reasons why I write and anothe list of what keeps me from writing. Feel free to add your own in the comments!

I write because…
-it’s what got me through my parent’s divorce.
-it’s physically pleasurable to put pen to paper.
-i was an avid reader as a child and wanted to create my own worlds to get lost in.
-the only way I make sense of the world is by writing everything down.
-my written words were my only friends when I was bullied in elementary school.
-it’s how I discovered my voice and opinions.
-it’s the only way people have really listened to me.
-it’s fun.
-a teacher told me I had a knack for it.
-I like to entertain people.
-it fulfills my need for public validation, introspection and solitude.
-I spend a lot of my time alone anyway.
-i have never wanted to do anything else.
-people like to invite writers to parties.
-biographies of notable writers are interesting as fuck.
-my social anxiety benefits my writing.
-therapy is expensive.
-it explains my weirdness.
-words are fun.
-grammar is sexy.

What keeps me from writing
-people
-food
-tumblr
-adorable cats
-music videos
-phone calls
-tumblr
-Hey Arnold
-Netflix
-my jobs
-naps
-parties
-family obligations
-small talk
-tumblr

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Check out my LinkedIn profile and get access to my accomplishments.

Follow me on Twitter and a bird will come to your window.

(This is not a picture of the journalist. Just some male model whose name happens to be Ian Frazier as well. Thank you Google)

Attending The New School situated in the heart of midtown (yes, I stole that line form the brochure) has its perks. As a journalism student I love that all my professors are part-time and are still working in the field. That means they can offer practical advice, instead of lecture me on how things were better before that pesky Internet thing happened. Another perk is the guest speakers we get to meet in our intimate seminar classes and yesterday I got to meet badass humorist Ian Frazier.

Taken from The New Yorker website:

“Ian Frazier is a staff writer. He has been contributing to The New Yorker since 1974, when he published his first piece in The Talk of the Town. A year later, the magazine ran his short story “The Bloomsbury Group Live at the Apollo.” Since then, he has published numerous nonfiction, Shouts and Murmurs, Talk of the Town pieces, and short stories in the magazine. Frazier is the author of eight books.”

Basically, he is a badass and prolific humorist who just happend to be down to earth, funny and a swearer. Anyone would love to have his career and so here are my badly taken notes from his visit.

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Character=plot.

If you find a voice that nobody has heard before, chances are it will have a lot to say.

All readers want a bedtime story. They want something familiar. So, when it came to that piece [his famous profile on Heloise] I wanted to do something different.

The list is a modernist device.

Online journalism lessens the writer’s authority. Because anyone can lok up what you have to say. That makes it harder for the writer. But it is good for when you have to publish long pieces, like 12,000 words. No [ print publication] publishes that length anymore.

Do something that you won’t be able to find online.

You want your interviewee to feel superior. Most people are not listened to. So really listen.

[On deciding what to focus on in a piece] I talk to people and see what I like.

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Check out my LinkedIn profile and get access to my accomplishments.

Follow me on Twitter and a bird will come to your window.

Monday, September 3rd. I don’t have class because of Labor Day.

10:30 AM I wake up determined to do my readings in advanced, start the semester right.

11:30 AM I have eaten a bowl of cereal. I have not opened a book for school. I am on Facebook.

11:31 AM I scream on the inside (and a little bit on the outside) and comment on the post with an exuberant “I DOOO!!!!!” I cross my fingers and hope this wasn’t a joke.

1:45 PM I am at the U.S. Open with my friend watching Serena play in the quarterfinals. We are supposed to have the poor people seats but we sneak into some empty upper middle class seats. This game is not a competition. She is playing against someone that isn’t even seeded. She shuts it down. I can’t believe that I am getting to see her play.

Side note: I became a tennis fan as a child because I was amazed to see the Williams sisters dominate a sport that has such a white bourgeois history. Since then I have also become an avid fan of Federer, Nadal and Murray. The reason I wanted to go to London in my semester off from college was to see the Williams play at Wimbledon (I didn’t get to see them but I still had a blast). Seeing Serena play on a TV screen or in person is such a difficult thing to explain. She is exhilarating and inspiring to watch. The fierce mental force she brings to each court is unparalleled.

4 PM We have been wandering around casually watching various matches. Federer’s match was cancelled so we have to make due with a match between a mediocre Croatian tennis player and a mediocre Russian tennis player. We look at the schedule and realize that Venus and Serena don’t play until 7:30 PM. We only have tickets for the day and in order to see them play we need tickets for the night.

4:30 PM We formulate a plan to keep us in the stadium. We must seem them play. No is not an option.

5:12 PM The mediocre match finishes. U.S. Open workers are kicking people out of the bleachers so they can clean. They are kicking every one out until 7 PM when they re-open. We decide that we are just going to wander the hallways surrounding the stadium until the game begins.

5: 25PM We are wandering the hallways when a worker calls after us. My friend says we are looking for our mother because she has tickets for the night games for us.  The worker tells us to go down the stairs and call her. This is make or break it time. Farther down the stairs are two workers waiting to kick us out. It is the point of no return so my friend says we should make a run for it. To the right of the top of the stairs are bathrooms that we can hide in until the Venus and Serena match starts.

5:29 PM We sprint up the stairs straight into the bathrooms. Either no one sees us or no one cares.

6:30 PM Journal entry: I have been standing in the bathroom stall at The U.S. Open for one hour. It’s like I am invisible. There is a woman in the stall next to me crying. One of the cleaning ladies (who have alo been in here for the past hour) asked her if she was O.K.  The crying woman replied, ” He hit me.” I don’t what to do or think right now. I want to say that it is all going to be O.K., but I can’t blow my cover. I wonder if this happens to spies often? The woman is mumbling in Spanish. She is praying furiously to Jésus. Never mind. I am being prejudiced. Turns out she is on her cellphone trying to get a ride home. Forty minutes to until we will be in the clear and be able to see the Williams sisters play. This is exciting!

7:15  PM My friend texts me that he left the bathroom and is now int he bleachers waiting for the match to start. I walk out the bathroom home-free. We fist-bump and are in awe that we actually pulled it off.

That was a great day for more than the obvious reasons. I was having a rough three weeks because of missed job opportunities, financial troubles (I almost couldn’t register for classes this fall) and drama in my personal life. I was feeling so depressed that I resigned myself to the idea of moving back home to my soul-sucking hometown in Wisconsin.  I had been kicked so many times in a row without the chance to brush myself off and pick myself up that I was slowly giving up on my dreams and aspirations. In summary: I had 99 problems and money could have solved 87 of them.

But being around my friend, who went pro at the U.S. Open this summer and failed miserably, but was happy anyways because “at least he tried instead of just talking about it,” inspired me. I was ready to give up when I realized we had to leave the stadium, but he was determined to see the Williams play. He reminded me that nothing can stop you when you want something bad enough and you act on that desire. I know it may sound stupid, that standing in bathroom could be inspirational, but it worked. And now whenever I get depressed and question if I am doing the right thing by living in NYC and “going for it,” I just remember the day two college kids wanted to see Serena and Venus play so badly that they hid in bathroom stalls for over an hour.

Check out my LinkedIn profile and get access to my accomplishments.

Follow me on Twitter and a bird will come to your window.

Check out other projects I am working on.

It happened on the plane ride home last week. Nestled in my confining airline seat, but enjoying the extra room being one row removed from first class allows, I descended into deep thought. I have spent most of my life as an only child. Because of this I am perfectly comfortable and sometimes prefer being alone. I learned to amuse myself through my imagination and I like to believe that being an only child laid the fertile ground for my imagination to flourish, and that greatly impacts the writer I am today. When you are used to being alone, it can be awkward when you act that way when you are in public.

So there I was thinking on the plane, but with an added twist. I have a bad habit of cocking my head to the side and furrowing my brow when I am deep in thought. Think of Zach Braff during his daydream sequences in Scrubs. I was doing this when the person seated next to me tapped me on the shoulder and asked me if I was OK. the look on her face was a mix of concern and a dawning realization she may be seated next to a crazy person.

This is not the first time that someone has called me on my “quirks.” Another side effect of being an only child is that I sometimes said my thoughts aloud just to hear a human voice. I can’t tell you how many times in the past few months someone has walked into my dorm elevator to catching me talking to myself. Yes, I am THAT girl.

These are habits I have had most of my life and I am trying to eradicate them so people don’t think I am crazy. Any advice or tips? Or should I just add that to the list of awkward things I love about myself, especially since my family and friends don’t seem to mind my “quirks?”

Check out my LinkedIn profile and get access to my accomplishments.

Follow me on Twitter and a bird will come to your window.

Check out other projects I am working on.