Flavor
First things first:
My dad is out of the hospital and back in rehab. We are all, needless to say, tremendously relieved. He is doing pretty well—returning to physical therapy and generally getting back into the rehab routine.
Once the paramedics arrived to transport him from the hospital, I headed home and back to work. I've been writing steadily for the past couple of days, trying hard to meet the twice-extended deadline for the second draft of my master's project. Pretty much the whole rest of the class turned theirs in 10 days ago, which means that our professors now feel that they have license to turn up the already high temperature in all of our other classes. And yes, dear reader, I have been feeling the burn.
To give you a little taste of one of the classes I am taking, Book Writing, here is a link to a story about it that ran Tuesday on NPR. It's worth listening to the audio version of the story—you'll get much a better sense of the class than from the text version. (I am proud to say that I have not—yet, anyway—contributed to the CPP. These are the small victories with which I must comfort myself.)
The story is about four minutes long. I'd estimate that the producer spent at the very least 10—and more likely 20—hours taping our class, and additional time doing one-on-one interviews with the professor and a few students and alums. Comparing the quantity of raw material gathered to the amount ultimately used in the piece yields a ratio of at least 150:1.
Yes, you read that right.
And while that ratio is lower in print than in broadcast journalism, it is still, to me at least, a daunting figure. And it is one of my great struggles with this undertaking: so much panning, so little gold. So much wheel-spinning, so little traction. It is just so, so hard to do this at all, let alone to do it well.
I am going back to my master's project now, to many more hours of flailing about while trying to make sense of a sprawling story, and trying to do it accurately, and fluidly, and without clichés.
Wish me luck.
My dad is out of the hospital and back in rehab. We are all, needless to say, tremendously relieved. He is doing pretty well—returning to physical therapy and generally getting back into the rehab routine.
Once the paramedics arrived to transport him from the hospital, I headed home and back to work. I've been writing steadily for the past couple of days, trying hard to meet the twice-extended deadline for the second draft of my master's project. Pretty much the whole rest of the class turned theirs in 10 days ago, which means that our professors now feel that they have license to turn up the already high temperature in all of our other classes. And yes, dear reader, I have been feeling the burn.
To give you a little taste of one of the classes I am taking, Book Writing, here is a link to a story about it that ran Tuesday on NPR. It's worth listening to the audio version of the story—you'll get much a better sense of the class than from the text version. (I am proud to say that I have not—yet, anyway—contributed to the CPP. These are the small victories with which I must comfort myself.)
The story is about four minutes long. I'd estimate that the producer spent at the very least 10—and more likely 20—hours taping our class, and additional time doing one-on-one interviews with the professor and a few students and alums. Comparing the quantity of raw material gathered to the amount ultimately used in the piece yields a ratio of at least 150:1.
Yes, you read that right.
And while that ratio is lower in print than in broadcast journalism, it is still, to me at least, a daunting figure. And it is one of my great struggles with this undertaking: so much panning, so little gold. So much wheel-spinning, so little traction. It is just so, so hard to do this at all, let alone to do it well.
I am going back to my master's project now, to many more hours of flailing about while trying to make sense of a sprawling story, and trying to do it accurately, and fluidly, and without clichés.
Wish me luck.
posted by Jody Rosen Knower at 4:18 PM
1 Comments:
Jody-
What is the least grade that you can get on this and still earn your degree? Time to do the "pass/fail" version, girl!!! Hope you feel better soon.
Hope Murtaugh'86
Post a Comment
<< Home