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In the spirit of Halloween being only a couple days away, I thought I'd share my latest project... A promo video that I created for Halloween Horror Nights! Thanks to Nicholson School of Communication and Universal Orlando Resort, I was able to go to Halloween Horror Nights (for the first time ever) for free! I also got the opportunity to be featured on Universal Orlando's blog and YouTube channel as well as an article on UCF Today! Here is the 5-minute video of the experience! Let me know what you think, and if you haven't gone yet, definitely make sure to check out the 25th Anniversary of Halloween Horror Nights at Universal! You won't regret it :) More and more, I am realizing the importance of writing for specific purposes and audiences. In my college reading of these texts:
To look into finding out more about writing in the workplace, I interviewed entrepreneur and full-time blogger, Lauren Grove, owner of the wedding blog, Every Last Detail. The essence of our interview was finding out what Lauren does and how she does it. In discussing her job, I focused on finding out about the role writing plays in her position, the overall work environment, and how she adapts to changes in technologies and her industry. Throughout the interview I was able to see more and more of the importance of understanding rhetorical situations and being able to adapt. As we began our conversation, I asked Lauren to tell me how she describes her position to people who ask what she does. Lauren said that she tells people she owns her own business (a wedding blog) and that her blog is kind of like publishing a magazine every day. She said the blog is mostly image-based, but she does a lot of writing for what she features. Lauren's job is about 10% blogging and 90% sales and emails. Lauren referred to herself as sort of a “glorified salesperson." She says that the sales aspect involves display ads, sponsored posts, and a vendor guide. She does a lot of social media posts and sharing for her vendor guide – what she describes as “content marketing.” When I asked Lauren to describe a typical day in her job, she laughed, and then I said, “I guess each day is probably different.” But in a way, her days are somewhat the same. She wakes up in the morning, has coffee, and then starts answering emails and posting social media; “basically, I sit in front of the computer all day. It’s a lot of typing, it’s a lot of email answering…a lot of social media.” She does a social media post for each blog post and usually schedules those in the mornings (“on a good day.”) She also answers a lot of emails and Facebook messages. She said she usually stops at around 6:30-7pm to eat dinner, but then works on writing blog posts after dinner. She said she knows what she’s posting on the blog on what day, but doesn’t usually schedule those ahead of time. I was interviewing her on a Saturday, and she said she still had to write her post for that day. She mentioned that the weekends are usually pretty dead, and people won’t see it right when you post it. Most of her traffic comes from Google search and Pinterest, so she said, it’s not really like they’re coming to her website every day. Lauren said, "A lot of people depend on social media to tell them when to go.” Although Lauren does do a lot of writing and editing in her job, she actually did not study writing at all – she never even took a single writing class. She went to USF and majored in psychology. She has some help from an employee and sometimes sponsors/businesses will write posts, but she also does a lot of the writing, and all of the social media posts. I asked her if she thought of herself as a professional writer, and she responded with, “I wouldn’t say professional writer,” but said it was a hard question. She said she never has seen herself as a professional writer. She defines a professional writer as someone who has the “technical knowledge” and went to school for it. She also said that she’s heard that some of that “technical knowledge” doesn’t transfer to web really well, because it might be “boring,” and that a lot of professional writers might find themselves “dumbing themselves down” to write for the web. Lauren has had her blog for about six years now, and with any business – especially one that relies on technology to run – a lot can change in six years. She discussed some of how her site has evolved over time. I wanted to find out more about the changes in her industry and how she adapts to changes. “The internet user is constantly changing and getting used to new platforms.” She continued, “Usually as larger websites come out with updates, like Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, and all of those sites that a lot of people frequent, and Facebook – even, that changes the expectation of the Internet user…so, it constantly has to evolve.” She is always keeping up to date with app algorithms because a lot of people just use their phones now (with Instagram and Facebook), and a lot of people just scroll through their phones without actually clicking on anything. This is a challenge for her because she needs people to click through to her website from those platforms. She says that using social media herself, reading articles, and staying up-to-date with business/tech blogs/magazines helps. She constantly pays for web development to help her keep up with changes, and is always making changes to the site to accommodate to the new updates. Lauren is also part of a new start-up wedding social media site, similar to Food Gawker. She explained how the changes in social media have led to this. She said that both Facebook and Pinterest have re-done their algorithms and featured only “sponsored” posts. So with Facebook and Pinterest monetizing their platforms, it has “severely depleting our organic reach has kind of scared us because we depend on them to get traffic to our sites, so we just want to create our own social network that we can control.” Her advice to anyone wanting to start a blog would be to come up with a topic and start now, because it’s really easy to start one – you just need a platform and a subject/topic. Other than that, she recommended getting a job/internship with someone who has one to learn the backend of things (for example, “tagging images”). She recommended getting experience in sales, graphic design (for “pin-able graphics”), photography, and/or video – and said there is a lot of options, and it would depend on what you want to do specifically. Lauren said she didn’t have a plan to start a blog and make a business out of it; she set out with the goal of educating brides (which is why she does a lot of “tips” posts). She wanted to become a wedding planner and start building a brand for her wedding planning business. “It just kind of segued into selling advertising and becoming…like the blog was my business instead.” Lauren sort of “fell into it” and didn’t have any sales experience, but said, “I would definitely recommend starting with at least one skill under your belt.” She said she did work in the wedding industry beforehand, and that made it a bit easier for her to work with wedding vendors – so that was her “segue” or “in.” But, if she could’ve, she said she would’ve wanted to have more sales experience beforehand, because “that’s how you make money.” People began asking her to advertise on her site, and she added a vendor guide on – which is how she makes most of her money. She did some calculations, “I make X per year, what will I need to do to make X in blogging, and that’s how I set my prices for my vendor guide and how many I need to sell.” One of the best pieces of advice she gave was to ask for what you want. She says, "you have to ask, if you don’t ask and if you don’t tell people about what you do, you won’t make any sales.” She stressed the importance of actively marketing yourself, contacting people, and “getting the guts” to email people and ask! With that, I became motivated to continue my own blog, and also consider options outside of schoolwork to pursue. What do you think? Would you ever become a blogger, and if so, what would you blog about?
Are you already a blogger? Leave a comment and I'll check out your blog. :) For our final project in my multimedia composition class, we created a game in Microsoft PowerPoint based off of a written text. The goal was to create an interactive transmedia piece. I chose The Gingerbread Man for my text because it is public domain and I thought it would be fun to create a game out of it. The game is based off of a fictional text, so some of the features and outcomes of the game are not very realistic, but I wanted to make it entertaining more than anything else. The storyline of the new transmedia game is a remix of the original story, so some outcomes and elements of the story are different than the original. For the project, we used skills we learned throughout the course in creating and using different types of multimedia assets. Our games contained procedural rhetoric, but they also incorporated visual, aural, and linguistic rhetorics. I designed many of the slide templates, took original photos, used graphic design and non-system fonts, as well as recorded the sound effects for the game. One of the biggest challenges we ran into as a class was making sure that the PowerPoints work correctly on different computers, different versions of PowerPoint, and different operating systems (Windows and Mac). I made a few di-cut gingerbread men to create the images. I used Preview to edit the photo of the gingerbread man to make the white background transparent. Here is the original photo I took with my phone of the gingerbread man cut out:  I layered the gingerbread man over pictures that I found on the Internet (sources below). Cow - http://www.earthintransition.org/ Horse – http://unpics.com/ Chicken – http://www.farmsanctuary.org/ Grass/Trees - http://www.eattheweeds.com/ Hole in ground - http://www.floridainjuryattorneyblawg.com/ River - http://www.bbc.co.uk/ On some of the layered pictures, I used animations to show the gingerbread man running. For some of the other pictures, I used the cut out and placed him around places in my apartment (in the oven, on a plate, and by the door). I also created images for titles in Photoshop for the Powerpoint using one of my favorite non-system (downloaded) fonts, Amatic. I thought that this sans-serif, handwriting font worked well for the titles. Here is the title image:  For the body text and links, I used Book Antiqua, which is one of my favorite serif fonts. I chose this font because it looks like a book/story, and I think it works well for the content of the game. For the sound effects, I used some help from my boyfriend, and we created the sound effects together. We did old man/old lady voices, made the noises of the animals, footsteps, etc. I used a song called “Sweet Gingerbread Man” by Geoff Love and His Orchestra for the soundtrack of the game. Here is the game! 
For this project on Aural (Sound) Rhetoric in my Multimedia Writing & Composition class, we were instructed to interview 2-3 of our classmates.
We explored the following questions: "What are the most compelling arguments for multimodal composition that you have heard/seen/read/experienced in your own life or work? What makes you think that writers should be encouraged to make meaning on several semiotic channels? Use multimodalities of expression? What are the most compelling arguments against multimodal composing that you have heard/seen/read/experienced? Why do teachers continue to privilege alphabetic composition above other modalities of composition/communication?" From my experiences in this course and throughout my life, I believe that multimodal composition is extremely important. These interviews confirmed that belief, and afforded me an opportunity to work on composing a multimedia element (sound) through editing with Adobe Audition. I am familiar with this program from my experiences in internships and coursework within the Radio/Television major at UCF. However, I had not yet gotten to use this program to edit an interview such as this. The audience of this interview is UCF students. The purpose is to show both the positives and negatives of multimodal composition and how multimedia can be used in learning and writing. The people I interviewed were classmates from my Multimedia Writing & Composition class. I framed the interview in a way that emphasizes the positives of multimodal composition - both starting and ending on a high note. We did not ignore situations and examples where multimodalities can be conflicting or used improperly, but there was more of a focus on what works well. I incorporated royalty-free music clips from Bensound.com, and the last song was an instrumental version of my original song, How To Be Happy. Two sounds were from YouTube - the Wu-Tang "Bring Da Ruckus Instrumental" and "Patrick's Laugh" sound effect. I tried to combine the most fitting sounds I could to go along with the audio. Each time I asked a question, I would play the same clip called, "The Lounge" from Bensound. That sound acts as a transition to let the audience know a new question is being asked. I also tried to match up responses to music I thought fit well with what they were saying. For instance, when Joq talked about the Wu Tang article we looked at in class, I played "Bring Da Ruckus" in the background. Our interviews were recorded in the UCF library. I recorded the introduction and conclusion after completing the interviews. I tried to edit out a lot of the "ums" and "likes" and even some of the breaths/loud background noises, but there were a lot of them, and I felt that some of the idiosyncrasies were essential to showing personality. Without further ado, here is the interview! This is my first project for my Multimedia Writing & Composition class (Playing with words | Designing with text). We were asked to design a song (or part of a song) in Microsoft Word using different fonts.  
Here are my door decorations for my residents in Spring 2015! The theme is chalkboard. I used chalkboard labels, a chalk ink pen, white cardstock, and paint chips from Wal-Mart. Super simple! The "Simply Remarkable" labels are on Amazon for under $10. I love making door decorations, but I had to do something simple this semester because of my hand pains. I tried to give some of them a messy chalkboard look. I created the outside door decorations on picmonkey.com and used a chalkboard background template and graphics from We Lived Happily Ever After. I printed them and backed them on brown and light blue construction paper. Too easy!  Today marks three years since I completed my first song, 11:11. In honor of that (and by request from my mom) I recorded a video for the song! It was a really nice day out, and my hands weren't in an insane amount of pain (although they do hurt). Here are a couple of screenshots from the shoot. The video is coming soon, so stay tuned! Things have been super hectic with my classes, internship, job, and severe carpal tunnel...but I finally did another cover! Here it is, I hope you like it! <3 Chandelier! Here's my cover of this catchy pop tune that I just CANNOT get out of my head! I've been pretty sick lately, so I took it down a little (can't hit those high notes right now). I also have carpal tunnel so I'm singing to a karaoke track. I've been reading a lot for my classes over the years, and especially this semester as I am taking four writing classes. However, today I read what was probably the most entertaining, and most hilarious assigned reading EVER!
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/im-comic-sans-asshole "I’M COMIC SANS, ASSHOLE." is a cleverly written monologue in which the font "Comic Sans" responds to someone who doesn’t like him. This was by far my favorite article of all of the articles I read from McSweeney's (and possibly my favorite article of all-time). I literally laughed out loud. I am a font fanatic and I personally hate Comic sans as a font. I know many others who also have strong feelings against this font. To top it off, the whole article is written in Comic Sans. I think that is one of the major reasons that this article stood out from the crowd. The diction that the author used in this article is what I think really made it hilarious and unique. Lacher effectively dropped the F bomb seven times. I read the article out loud as I was reading it for the first time, and I realized how essential the curse words were in making Comic Sans really seem real and pissed off. To answer a discussion question posed by one of my classmates about the impact of the swearing, I do not think the message would have the same impact without the swearing. I think it was the "cherry completing the sundae" and definitely gave "special spice" to personify and characterize Comic Sans as a figure with feelings. Imagine if a bunch of people were always talking trash about you, egging you on, choosing other fonts over you (if you were a font) – this is the situation Comic Sans is dealing with. His diction shows his anger and emotion, and certainly adds humor to the piece. A lot of McSweeney's articles have cursing in them, so I don't think that this would’ve turned off the editor. So many comedians nowadays rely on the use of curse words (especially the F bomb) to help put emphasis on funny phrases. And a lot of people do the same thing in conversation. I think the swearing was “tasteful” (enough) and necessary to the conversational nature of this narrative. Beyond the swearing (and possibly in contrast to it), Lacher sprinkles in a few complex words that distinguish Comic Sans and provide him with credibility. Some examples include "malformed" "levity" and "stark." Lacher's use of such strong words (in contrast to the conversational curse words) adds to the ethos of Comic Sans. Comic Sans also bashes a bunch of other fonts, including Helvetica, Gotham, Avenir, and Univers, in a uniquely worded way. For example, "We don’t all have seventy-three weights of stick-up-my-ass Helvetica sitting on our seventeen-inch MacBook Pros" and the whole section that says that Comic Sans is doing cool, fun things while other fonts are doing essentially the opposite (boring things). As others have mentioned, these descriptions really provide imagery and provide a picture for the audience of Comic Sans being the cool kid, and all those other fonts being uptight and lame. Comic Sans is basically saying "F you" the whole time through his choice of words. Toward the end he says, "It doesn't even matter what you think. You know why, jagoff? Cause I'm famous." The choice of words here further identifies the point of view from Comic Sans. He then goes on to paint a picture of all of the places he is - signs, browsers, and instant messengers. I also really enjoyed his last paragraph "Enough of this bullshit. I'm gonna go get hammered with Papyrus." This created imagery of two annoying fonts going out and getting drunk and pissing people off - further adding to the personification of the Comic Sans character. Overall, I think the reasons this article really stood out stem from the negative connotations commonly associated with Comic Sans, the format of the article itself (in Comic Sans), as well as the diction and tone (conversational curse words teamed with condescending complex words). Some questions for further analysis: 1. What other words or literary techniques could Lacher have employed to show Comic Sans as a personified character? 2. How else was the author's tone of voice defined by the words and phrases of the narrative? 3. Why do you think Lacher didn't include more positive things that people say about Comic Sans? I decided to "Go" for it and try the Guitar Center Singer Songwriter contest! Visit my page here to vote (page views=votes). Here is one of my entries! Sorry for skipping a week, but here's a little cover of a song I like by Mat Kearney. Hope you like it! I decided to talk a bunch at the end for some reason...so feel free to stop watching before that happens. For this discussion, I looked into some online publications that I might want to write for.
The Rain, Party, & Disaster Society http://rpdsociety.com/ (Links to an external site.) This is a "workshop-based" literary publication that presents new ideas and challenges readers to question commonly accepted ideas. Their slogan is “not for the faint of heart”. They like to publish works that have "out of the ordinary" styles, present readers with questions or debate, and basically "break mainstream rules within their genre". self-titled http://www.self-titledmag.com/ (Links to an external site.) This is a music magazine that “has nothing to do with music. At least not in the traditional sense of self-important ‘criticism’ and profiles that read like regurgitated press releases.” They do reviews, features, and interviews of lesser-known musicians and answer “the questions others don’t ask”. Their slogan is “Your new favorite music magazine”. So as you can see, they are a bit boastful in their tone, but they have a lot of followers and fans, so they do seem to be pretty credible. They also accept submissions by mail. Literary Juice http://www.literaryjuice.com/ (Links to an external site.) This magazine features “fiction and poetry that are clever, bold, and even weird!” or “100% pure originality”. They accept submissions of fiction, flash fiction, pulp fiction, poetry, and even videos of poetry readings for their YouTube in which you can "read your poem, sing your poem, perform your poem, do whatever you want, so long as you adhere to the guidelines.” --- I struggled to find publications that met my criteria for being “credible” - I turned down a lot of sites that sounded good because they looked bad. I found Newpages.com to be really helpful in my search for publications. I used the “Calls For Submissions" page and searched the page for the word “online” which helped me to see which publications were online-only. I used the “Calls For Submissions” page because I wanted to find publications that were open to accepting works of others. This led me to finding The Rain, Party, & Disaster Society. I also searched the “Literary Magazines” page and that’s where I found Literary Juice. I also tried Google-searching “online-only magazines”, and I found a list of someone’s “Top 10 Online-Only Magazines” which led me to find self-titled magazine. These particular publications were intriguing to me because they were unique. Each had its own “edge”, and each seemed to go beyond the “mainstream” types of publications. I loved the way each one looked – the designs were very appealing, and worked well for their types of publications. Both self-titled and The Rain, Party, & Disaster Society provided high quality online magazines through the “issuu” application. I could see myself writing for any of these three publications. --- Through this exercise, I became more aware of a variety of sites that I could publish my works in. I urge my fellow writers out there to do the same! Visit http://www.newpages.com and discover many opportunities! How can you know if an online source is credible?
When I first visit an online publication, I judge it by the overall visual representation. The way it looks is a big factor in determining credibility to me. Appearance can define much more than just the way a site looks; it’s the way it works. When I visit an online publication (or any website really), I automatically deem it as credible or not it based on all aspects of the design: images, banners, and logos (are they of high quality and match the page?), fonts (are they professional and consistent?), navigation (is it easy to find things?), etc. Specific, organized navigation is vital. If there are too many tabs, it might be hard to find what you're looking for. The "about", "contact," "submissions," and "issues" tabs are important and should be easily accessible. Sometimes this information may fall under different names/links, which is fine as long as they are accessible. Some websites have overly cluttered navigation, which doesn’t bode well for 1) you finding out how to submit work to it or 2) someone finding your work on that site if you get published. I looked into a couple of Orlando-based publications to compare their credibility in terms of design. The http://www.thedailycity.com/ (Links to an external site.) was by far the least visually appealing to me. It had way too many links in the main navigation bar, the overall layout was not very appealing, the fonts were inconsistent (Times New Roman mixed with Georgia), the contact information was somewhat hard to locate (down the side of the page), and it just wasn’t very well organized. Not all of it was bad, I’m sure there were a lot of good things too, but I was distracted by the bad. Aside from appearance, there are other factors that I take into consideration when determining credibility. Content is a big one. And not just what’s being said but how it’s being said. For example, if there are grammatical errors in content, I’m less likely to trust the online source. Another factor would be the writers and their credibility. If authors have a short bio and links to other writings (the more the better), I feel like they are a more credible source. As far as what’s in their bio goes, I think it depends on the type of publication source. If it’s a news publication, I might want to know their education, position/where they work, and how long they have been in the field. If it’s a humorous publication, I might want to know random facts about them that are funny. I also think that a source is more credible if it has a wide range of authors; however, if there are too many it might seem overwhelming and it might seem like they just let anyone post things on their website. To me, it’s nicer to see that there is a wide range of authors that have written multiple pieces for the site than to see countless people who have only written one or two things. I guess that might all depend on the type of publication too, but I’m speaking generally – this is how I feel for most online publications. Basically, I want to know that the people writing know what they are writing about, and care about it. I think all of the links for literary magazines had places to submit work. I liked the overall simplicity of the Burrow Press Review website. They have submission guidelines onhttp://www.burrowpressreview.com/about/ (Links to an external site.) and they are very clear. I think if a publication is going to accept submissions, they do need to be clear on their guidelines. I think submissions can boost credibility of a site for sure - especially if the submission guidelines and acceptances are professional, and "every submission gets a fair and thorough read” (Burrow Press Review). Those things show that the publication truly cares about the quality of their work. I think comment boards can be helpful to a publication if they are monitored for spam. Most people usually ignore the comment sections, but sometimes it’s nice to have a place to discuss specific articles. With news sites like http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ (Links to an external site.) for example, there is a “Conversations” section beneath each article. This not only shows that a lot of people are reading the article, but that a lot of people are engaging in conversation about the article. For my own writing, I would ideally like to publish on a website that meets all of the above criteria for my idea of being “credible”, but I’m definitely not going to be that picky. I also think reach and readership are extremely important. Any online publication that has the ability to reach audiences that I would be targeting through my writing would be a good destination for me. I don’t know much about it, but after viewing http://thedropp.com/ (Links to an external site.) I thought it might be a good publication to write for, or suggest an article or event, or submit my own art/music for review as it says in their contact box. Their site is very visually appealing, their content is interesting and varied; however, I couldn’t find information on authors of articles. I also don’t know how popular the site is, I’d never heard of it, I’m not sure what their reach is. It would be necessary to do research more before deciding on what would be good destinations for my writing. But in general, I would like to write for sites that interest me and are “credible” in the eyes of most people (or in other words, people would read it). How do you decide what is credible? What do you look for in a publication? I'd love to hear your thoughts! New cover of a Ben Rector song! It's a shorter one, only half of the song. But I did some harmonies on it that I hope you will enjoy! <3 Today I went to the library and discovered the periodicals section. I have to admit, if it weren't for my online class assignment, I may have never made this trip.
For Part I, I listed a bunch of magazines that sparked my interest that I might be interested in reading and maybe writing for. For Part II, I consulted the Writer's Market to find print publications that interested me. Part III describes the journey and identifies one publication that really stood out to me. Part I
Before the journey even started, I felt frustration in deciding what I wanted to do (and what I could reasonably do) for the “by foot” part of the assignment. After some contemplating, I decided I would go to the UCF library to look at their periodicals. I began my journey to finding publications at the library this morning. To be honest, I’d never been to the periodical section before (and didn’t even know it existed). I also had never really considered writing for a magazine before this class. I was really surprised with how intrigued I was by the publications. Looking at them, feeling them, and smelling them (some of them had that nice new book smell!) made all the difference. Of course I could’ve looked up all of them online, but that just wouldn’t have been the same. I didn’t realize that until I was in the library touching all of the magazines. It felt a little weird for me at first, being in the library, looking through magazines, and taking pictures of them with my phone to remember which ones I’d looked at and found interesting. But I kind of lost myself in the exploration. I had no idea all of those publications even existed. My list is a little long, but I chose them each for a reason (and if I went through each one to explain what interested me and why I looked at it, I would end up writing way too much, so I’m not going to do that). However, the general reason I chose all of the publications I did was because I felt I would want to read them. They each either had catchy covers, headlines, images, text, or a combination of all of those things. I chose publications of topics that interest me. I think one of the magazines that interested me the most was Emmy. I initially wanted to look at it since the Emmys aired recently. The cover of the edition that I looked at was very unique. This edition featured Halle Berry on the front. It was like a trifold board that was split down the middle and you can open it up and see sort of another cover. It’s hard to explain, but it was really cool. The back also folded out and featured one of my favorite TV shows/comedians, Louie CK, and was a section of congratulations to FX’s primetime Emmy nominations. The overall feel of the magazine was really nice. The cover was thick and glossy. The inside featured catchy headlines such as “The YouTube Alternative” an article about Vimeo, “Reality Check” about a reality TV show production company owner, “The TV Gene Led Straight to Her Hart” about Rachel Bilson (plays character Zoe Hart) and how she was born into show business because of her father, and “Merger Mania” about AT&T and DirecTV merging. The overall purpose and mission of the magazine seems to be to provide information about the field of television including professionals in the field, programming, and technology. I think the cover; with headlines such as “Out of This World: The dazzling Halle Berry sends summer into orbit with CBS’s spacey Extant”, “Cell Mates: Seth Meyers Phones Fred Armisen”, and “Their Best Episode Ever” gives off a sort of sensationalized vibe with the purpose of providing insider information about specifics of TV. I think that I could contribute by talking about what’s new with TV – technologies and new shows. I would like to interview people in the business for the magazine; for example, writers, producers, etc., I think that would be extremely fascinating! Another assignment from my Writing for Publications course. This exercise really made me think about my life, which is always fun. Introspection! Try it out, see what you might want to write about.
1. Three memorable personal experiences
I could write about:
14. Three published writers you know personally (any genre, print or online)
I have loved this song for a while, and it was one of the first songs I learned how to play by Colbie Caillat. Here I am playing it a couple years ago... And here I am playing it tonight! I recently wrote a discussion post for my Writing for Publication course which helped me identify myself as a writer.
I answered the following interview questions: Where and when do you write best? What has been the most successful piece you’ve ever written, and why? What skills have you mastered, and what still eludes you? What is your revision process? Why do you write? I've been feeling kinda lazy lately! I'm still getting into the groove, and I want to be less lazy and do more writing! For now, all I have is this video of "The Lazy Song"...but stay tuned for less lazy things! :) By the way, there's a silly surprise in the video, so watch the whole thing! (it's short anyway, it's only a verse and chorus). I'm sad that summer is ending, but at the same time, I am excited for what this new semester will bring. I wanted to sing this song with a friend I made over summer. She's a super talented singer and fellow staff member! I hope you enjoy our video :) For fall I have decided to do a weather theme for my floor! Here are the inside door decorations which are made from di-cut umbrella paint chips, colored string, and white cardstock. Here are some of the floor decorations in the hallway! I used the outsides of the di-cut paint chips to make bigger decorations on brown paper. I also made some cloud paintings and a palm tree with wind blowing. Due to being extremely busy, I am posting a video from February of my freshman year. I participated in the Miss UCF pageant, and this was one of the first times I'd performed at UCF. I'd performed original songs before, mostly at my mom's store, but this was sort of different. I was being "judged" on my talent (how does one "judge" talent?) as a part of the competition. I wished I'd been able to sing the whole song, but had to cut it short to meet the time limit. I was pretty nervous. The audience started "the clap" (which also happened to me at graduation when I played an original song as part of my speech, and my guitar was totally out of tune...) I feel like the clap always happens when people don't really like the music, to encourage the musician/band to keep going to finish the song or something. Another reason (which makes more sense) to start the clap would be if encouraged by the singer/band to clap. In this case, I was not encouraging anyone, nor was I in need of encouragement...but people started clapping. I already have issues with staying on tempo, so I think the clap threw me off more. However, I didn't really care that it was happening. A line in my song right before the chorus "can it wait 'til I'm done" seemed to be misinterpreted by the audience. They thought I was asking them to stop clapping until I was done! A friend of mine told me this after the performance, and I personally thought it was hilarious. Well enough blabbing, here it is! :) 11/11 posted on 8/8 ;P I love repeating numbers... It's a new month, school is starting again soon, and I've been thinking a lot about life...and love. I wanted to do a song that portrays part of my past, represents my present, and lets me fantasize for the future. I sang this song with my sister for a wedding, when my dad married my stepmom. "Everything means nothing, if I ain't got you." Thank you for reading and watching. Spread the love!
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