The Days to Come

Between this and my other three blogs, I am approaching some 200 posts. On this, my main blog, I am now writing what will become post number 166. It is not my first writing for the year (I’ve left comments on a few other bloggers’ posts), but it is the first post – the first substantive writing for 2007. It for sure won’t be the last. In addition to a couple of freelance stories I’ll probably pick up next week, there will be much more written for the sake of writing. And it will be housed right here and on my other sites.

Although I didn’t, nor will I make any resolutions, I do intend to put a little more time into writing fiction. I have a blog dedicated to it and a story is in the very early stages of development. For me, it is absolutely “writing outside the box.” It feels unfamiliar, uncomfortable and unsteady. However no matter how it “feels,” I am, so far, pleased with the results. It is still difficult to start the task of writing even though I know that once I’ve started, it always comes. I can usually call up the verbiage on demand; it’s just the initial spark that is so hard to fire sometimes.

Another area of concentration will be my photography. I have enrolled in a photography class next semester – basic photography – not because I need it for graduation, but because I don’t know everything. Photography is something I know only a smattering about, and I want to learn much more. I have the time and the units to spare, so photography it is. It will be my first photography class since high school – some 25+ years ago!

As far as my writing is concerned, my schooling is not yet complete there either, although it will be complete enough for a BA degree next June! Ah, but I’m getting ahead of myself – I didn’t get this far by “future-tripping.” My journalism classes will include “media law” and “war, peace and mass media.” The second class will be the very last class taught by a retiring professor with a 40-year tenure at Sac State. He is highly respected by students and staff alike. I am very fortunate to be among his last students. I’ve had the media law professor previously; he’s tough, but intriguing. I’m looking forward to the class, I kind of like law. Scary, I know!

I enrolled in another journalism course that is not required but interests me very much. Magazine writing is an area that might appeal to me. My first journalism professor who happens to be my academic advisor is teaching the class. I have an excellent rapport with him and he is a working journalist. One of the goals of the course is that students sell an article to a magazine. Don’t worry; you’ll all be the first to know when and where it will be published.

My fifth and final class is to fulfill a stupid requirement called a “writing intensive” course. You’d think that a journalism major would be well versed in writing… that virtually every journalism class would be “writing intensive.” Believe it or not, not a single one is. Furthermore, my major is government-journalism (essentially a dual major, poly-sci and journalism). Only a couple of government section classes qualify. Of course, they aren’t classes that could be used to knock off other requirements with the same stone.

So my “writing intensive course?”
RLS-122. “RLS” stand for “Recreation and Leisure Studies.”
Hey, I didn’t make the rules!