How to Write with Zero Motivation
Sometimes I’ll ask a friend why they’ve halted on their creative fiction piece, or why they put off their paper to the last minute, and they’ll tell me they have writer’s block. I can relate to them; I used to get writer’s block too. I would tell myself I was going to write, and then just stare at the screen for awhile before surfing the net instead. Of course, this was before I started interning at The Free Lance Star. As a journalist, every story I’m assigned has a very real and present deadline. I can’t wait for creativity to strike or for my muse to enlighten me- I have to start working right now. And so far, I’ve written more than 50 stories and never missed a deadline. Here’s some of the ways I do it: (more…)
Why I Like Phone Interviews
Photo of Carole Lombard from Flickr user myvintagevogue
Every journalism teacher I’ve ever had has taught me that whenever possible, I should go in person to conduct an interview. But I’ve come to learn that when you’re 5′1″, female, and weigh 100 pounds and change, you need to make your own safety as much of a priority as getting the scoop. (more…)
Rollover Images
Right now, I’m in the process of designing the Pendulum Journal website. If you click that link, you’ll get a dummy site that includes our mission and submission information, but not much in the way of a layout. One thing we have decided as a group is to keep the site warm looking with lots of brown tones, a possible red highlight, and a chronology theme (pendulums, clocks, gears etc.). I think it has the possibility of looking very steampunk.
A basic aspect of design we decided on was the use of circles. Makes sense, clocks and pendulums are usually circular. We were inspired in part by the navigation on Coilhouse. So today I set to work making rollover buttons using Photoshop and Fireworks.
In Photoshop, I modified some photos of clocks taken by the fantastic Leo Reynolds. I made two versions. One in color:
Tips for Getting the Most out of Flickr
Fig 1.1 – An example of an"interesting" photo on Flickr.
If you read my last post then you know that I got 50 (now it’s over 60) people to submit to Pendulum Journal in three days just by making a Flickr group. However, I had an advantage in getting things to go that quickly. Since I’ve been a Flickr user for a little under a year, I had some previous knowledge of how Flickr works. Here are my tips on how to get the best photos the fastest:
How I Harnessed Flickr to Get Mad Submissions
When Professor Emerson told us we had a little over a month to get enough submissions to fill up the inaugural issue of our online literary journal, I was a bit overwhelmed. The online literary journals we’ve looked at in class, like Blackbird and Drunken Boat, have around 30 to 50 works per issue. And since it’s very unlikely that they elected to showcase every submission they received for the issue, it’s likely they had around 60 to 100 individual submissions. Now where were we, an unknown student inaugural journal, going to find 100 people to submit their photos, art, sculptures and film to us?
The answer turned out to be Flickr, an image and video hosting site that serves as a networking community for photographers. Anyone can set up a Flickr profile, from a Parisian fashion photographer who wants to host her portfolio to a mom in Illinois who wants to post pictures of her kids. In fact, even I have my own Flickr site, laureninspace, where I post pictures of my knitting, daily outfits, and anime conventions I attend. Overall, millions of users host more than three billion photos, according to Flickr’s latest figures.