Posts Tagged ‘Writing Careers’
January 20th, 2010
Finding the right internship is not as tricky as it seems.
By Amelia Anderson
Although internships are like taking on a part-time job while students are finishing their education, they are actually very beneficial to future goals. Internships will not only give you experience in the field you are interested in pursuing, but they usually act as some form of school credit, can potentially open a possible permanent position within that same company in the future, and some will actually offer a small payment or stipend. All in all, internships are great ways to get you on the right career path. Even if you find that you no longer hold interest in your field, then the internship has served the purpose of showing you whether you would feel compatible with that career or not. Whether you are in high school or college, here are some tips on finding the internship that will be beneficial for you.
Ask Your Teachers
Teachers are a great source of information when it comes to your school and whatever jobs might be available in it. Chances are, at least one of your teachers will know of an internship at the school, which will make it easy for you to get to your job and classes on time. And, since your teachers have gotten to know you pretty well over the course of months or years, they are inclined to have your best interests in mind with your future plans. If you are interested in becoming an editor, ask your writing teacher if he or she knows of any internships that are related to the editing field. In my own experience, I had a teacher who referred me to taking an internship in a Writing Center because I was interested in becoming a writer.
Browse Online
There are plenty of job-listings that actually list available internships, as well. Just punch in the word “internship” into your search engine and plenty of helpful sites will pop up. Websites like http://www.craigslist.org, www.internships.com, and http://college.monster.com are great resources for finding internships for a specific field. Be sure that you are dealing with a legitimate company for your internship, though. Some internships are offered that do not provide school credit or any compensation, which is not a productive use of your time. Get another individual’s opinion, like one of your professor’s, to see whether or not the internship you have found online will benefit your career goals.
Check the School’s Career Center
Schools are meant to help people earn a better career, so college campuses provide a career center for their students as an extra step in those future plans. Career centers will not only help you find an internship that is suitable for you, but they will also help you prepare a resume and possible even provide some coaching and tips for your interviews. Yes, even an internship requires an interview. Internships not only provide experience, but they help prepare students to deal with the pressures of a regular job, which also requires an interview and resume.
Ask Friend and Family
There is no shame in asking the people who are closest to you for help in finding an internship. These days, jobs can be hard to come by, and internships are not an exception to this. It is very common for people to network, using the people they are close with as resources for inside information on job and intern openings. If you know someone who is working in a field that is related to your own future goals, then ask that friend or family member about any internship openings. If that person can recommend you to his or her boss, then you are already ahead of the game by having a personal reference within the company.
Check the Newspaper’s Classifieds
It may seem old fashioned to some people, but leafing through a newspaper can be useful in finding an internship. It not only lists available jobs, but it lists available internships, too. Although most people prefer to search for their information online, sometimes when the cyber world of searching lets people down, it is helpful to use a different resource and open up the black and white pages of the classified section of the newspaper. If you ever feel stumped with your searches, try a different source. There is always more than one.
December 17th, 2009
by Julia H. Jackson
Dave Barry is a Pulitzer-award winning humor writer with more than 25 years of professional writing under his belt. He got his start writing humor columns for The Miami Herald, where he later became a nationally syndicated columnist. This is the man who brought us such classics as Dave Barry’s Guide to Marriage And/Or Sex and Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltway: A Vicious and Unprovoked Attack on our Most Cherished Political Institutions, newspaper column collections such as Boogers Are My Beat: More Lies and Some Actual Journalism! and Dave Barry is NOT Making This Up, and novels like Big Trouble and Dave Barry’s Complete Guide to Guys that later translated to the big screen. Most recently, Dave has partnered with Ridley Pearson to write the Disney Edition Starcatcher series for kids, with titles such as Peter and the Sword of Mercy and Science Fair. Dave agreed to share some Writing Careers tips with us, just as soon as he’d polished his annual “Year in Review” column, which readers can read at The Miami Herald on December 26.
Photo by Daniel Portnoy
JHJ: How did you get your start as a writer?
DB: I always liked to write humor. I wrote humor columns (at least I thought they were funny) for my high school and college newspapers. When I got out of college I went to work for a small newspaper, and when I could I wrote humor columns there. Eventually I got some larger newspapers to publish my work, and I just kept building on that until humor-writing was my only job.
JHJ: You’ve accomplished so much, between your newspaper columns, books (both fiction and nonfiction), and films. How do you approach writing for different media while still preserving your signature style?
DB: I don’t really think about the medium; I think about the audience, and what would likely entertain them. My main goal is not to be boring.
JHJ: How do you define “humor?”
DB: It’s anything that’s intended to make people laugh and actually succeeds.
JHJ: Who or what inspires you?
DB: More than anything, deep down inside, it’s a need to be liked, and a fear of failing at that. This is not a very noble motive, I admit, but I think it’s true of most of us in the humor business.
JHJ: What tips can you offer young writers?
DB: If you want to be funny, be funny quickly — get the joke out there, end with a punchline, and don’t dwell on it. Move right on to the next joke. And give your audience credit for being at least as smart as you are.
November 10th, 2009
by Julia H. Jackson
“I see no intrinsic reason why a doubly talented artist might not arise and create a comic strip novel masterpiece.” – John Updike, 1969
A young Iranian girl is sent to boarding school in Switzerland in an effort to escape the Iranian revolution. One night, after her boyfriend breaks up with her and she is left alone in an isolated European metropolis, she gets on the subway and rides it in loops all night long. She is an outspoken artist, a teenager living in exile whose strongest bonds are to the God she is just beginning to doubt and her uncle Anoosh, who is a political prisoner.
Who is this girl? And how do we know her?
We see her in thick black and white lines, her story outlined in rectangular blocks, words penciled in panels like a photograph’s negative. She is Marjane Satrapi, cartoonist, writer, and author of Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, and its sequel, Persepolis 2: The Story of Return. Satrapi, who grew up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution and was educated in Iran, Switzerland, and France, transformed her story into an animated film in 2007. Satrapi’s story is family, exile, religion, art, politics, and personal growth, and it transcends both cartoons and memoir. Her work is best categorized as graphic novel, a genre that we will explore in today’s Write Like You Mean It: Graphic Storytelling.
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October 30th, 2009
By: Julia H. Jackson
Leanne Milway Chabalko is a copywriter in San Francisco whose career achievements and professional background echo the trajectory of the online journalism and advertising boom. Now an established copywriter at Oglivy West, she has developed campaigns for clients such as Yahoo!, Cisco, Wells Fargo, and the San Francisco Department of the Environment. She got her start at USA Today.com, where she first learned how to write for the web, a skill that can be applied to marketing, advertising, development, and business. Forget Mad Men – Leanne and her compatriots go beyond the print world to find creativity in advertising. She agreed to share some ideas with us here at Eduify for our next installment in Writing Careers: Real Tips from Real Writers.
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October 26th, 2009
By: Julia H. Jackson
“I believe in putting the horror in the mind of the audience and not necessarily on the screen.” – Alfred Hitchcock, in an interview with BBC reporter Huw Wheldon, May 5, 1965.
In 1954, notable director Alfred Hitchcock and screenwriter John Michael Hayes sat down to adapt the Cornell Woolrich short story “It Had to Be Murder” into Rear Window, what later became one of the most renowned films in American history. The original story featured only three characters: injured journalist L.B. “Jeff” Jeffries, his girlfriend Stella, and Lars Thorwald, Jeff’s neighbor, who he suspects has murdered his wife. Hitchcock and Hayes expanded Woolrich’s world to include a star-studded cast (featuring Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly), a complete Greenwich-style apartment complex, and a minimal score by Franz Waxman. Somehow, Hitchcock and his team created a suspense-driven universe that played on themes of isolation, voyeurism, and romance. Just how did they do it? In today’s Write Like You Mean It, we’ll share some of Hitchcock’s own personal philosophies for creating a Window of your own.
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