Well my creative writing class that I created this blog for officially comes to an end today. So what does that mean for this blog? Am I going to keep this or abandon it? Well, to be honest, I haven’t decided yet. I am thinking about keeping it for a while, maybe a few months more or so because I want to see how big of a following this blog gets. I haven’t posted that much yet, but I have looked at the stats and over the last month or so, it seems my page actually got over 50 views which, even though is not a lot, it is more than I expected. Thus, I’m curious to see if I can get maybe several hundred views or more over the next few months. If not, then I will most likely abandon the blog. But if I do get those views, then I may keep it around.

There is another variable that will determine whether I keep this blog though. Will I have the time to post enough so that I can get a following to start growing? I’d like to shoot for posting once a week at the minimum, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to. I’m about to start the fall semester of my senior year at Stony Brook University and I will be very busy once that starts. I’m taking intense classes for y meteorology major that will be consuming almost all of my time. I will also be working hopefully as I’m aiming to get an on-campus job this semester. Every other weekend I will be working at Kohl’s in the shoe department like I normally do. So, will I have the time? That’s also what I’ll be experimenting with over the next few months.

My question for you guys who are reading my blog is, what kinds of posts would you want? I guess I could post some of my writing or I can post about trains or put links to my train videos on here. I could also post about weather. Either I can post forecasts for specific areas (I’ll probably stick with Long Island & NYC) or I can do a weekly post with a lesson about a type of weather phenomena. So comment and let me know what you guys would want. Oh, I could also do movie reviews! Thank you for taking the time to read my blog, it is much appreciated!

As a reminder, while at the Southampton Writers’ Conference, my class explored five different topics: coastal apathy, urban blight, income inequality, animal abuse, and intolerance. Each day, we wrote a piece inspired by the topic being discussed that day. Even though my pieces are not posted on this blog yet, this assignment was to explain how each of the pieces intersected with its respective topic. Here is the reflection:

Each piece that I wrote during my week at the Writers’ Conference in Southampton was inspired by the topic being discussed on that day that the piece was written. The first theme we discussed was coastal apathy: the doom and gloom of pollution on our waters. Even though our guest speaker focused on the positive side of things by talking about all the different amazing sea creatures that live in our water, my poem “The Weeping Ocean” was inspired by the doom and gloom.

My poem is essentially conveying that human pollution and disregard for our environment has contaminated our waters. Because of this, as I am walking deeper and deeper into the ocean, I can feel the pain it has suffered because of humanity and I feel as though it calls me to help it. Maybe the ocean wants me to take action against coastal apathy. Raise awareness. But would it be enough? There is also a sense of hopelessness which is because pollution along our coasts is so widespread that it may be too late to save the ocean. A single person such as myself can’t alone save the ocean. We must resist coastal apathy together for anything at all to change.

My second piece was a scary story that conveys a morbid overtone about urban blight. Abandoned buildings can be scary, especially at night. They are also great places for criminals to hide out and wait, such as the serial killer in my story “Hunted Down”. The only positive overtone is at the end of the story when the abandoned residence halls were restored and named after the victims of the massacre that night. My third piece relates to income inequality because it relates examples of some of the conditions and pressures that poor families are facing. In my piece, Billy’s family is so poor that they must siphon gas. My story also relates the ignorance of upper class families and the disregard they have for those less fortunate through the characterization of the Williamson family. The hardships of Billy’s family are intended to gain sympathy from the reader for such families and anger towards upper class families. Readers will be prompted to resist income inequality by being generous to those who are less fortunate, unlike the Williamsons in my story.

My fourth piece intersects with animal abuse, but a unique type of it. My piece “Something Scary” conveys not domestic animal abuse, but animal abuse happening out in the wild. This is not an uncommon thing. I’ve heard stories about people throwing frogs up in the air and throwing rocks at bats. The three boys in my story throw rocks at geese in the pond; a cruel act that is dramatized by the details that I included, such as one of the gooses swallowing ad choking on a rock. This is meant to get the readers angry at the animal abuse taking place. Then, the readers experience a catharsis as the boys are scared off by the owner of the wildlife refuge. In this sense, my story resists animal abuse.

My fifth piece was a poem entitled “Them”. This was inspired by intolerance. When it comes to intolerance based on these facets, there always seems to be a larger group of people (i.e. Ku Klux Klan) trying to suppress those of a certain race, ethnicity, religion, etc. In this poem, I categorize such groups as being “them.” I wrote this poem from the point of view of the people being suppressed by “them” to convey the fear that the people being suppressed might fear and to convey everything that is taken away from them due to intolerance. Thus, this poem is intended to get readers angry and resist intolerance.

This was an assignment I had to do for Creative Writing- Interdisciplinary Arts class. This class is a summer class that me and four other Stony Brook students enrolled in. As a part of the class, we were required to attend the Southampton Writers’ Conference for a week. While there, we listened to various readings and lectures, attended an improv show and sat in on Roger Rosenblatt’s Master Class Series, and during our class time, we covered five different topics, one teach day to serve as inspiration for the piece we would write on that day. Here is my reflection of the conference and also a discussion of which topic discussed stuck with me the most and why. FYI, the five topics discussed were coastal apathy, urban blight, income inequality, animal abuse, and intolerance.

My Reflection:

Attending the Southampton Writers’ Conference was a unique experience for me. I learned a lot about creative writing from all the different speakers, got to listen to other writers share their work, and met people with whom I am now friends. I learned about different elements of creative writing, such as the core moment in a literary piece, from attending Roger Rosenblatt’s Master Classes, and I got to explore my own creative outlets each afternoon at a different location where me and my classmates would write on location about a different topic related to the site we were visiting.

For our writing assignments, we could write whatever we wanted in whatever genre we preferred. However, the assignments were unique in that each one focused on specific sensory details and different crafts that writers utilize in their literary works. It was interesting to learn about time compression, for example, where the writer uses as subtle a way as possible to describe the passing of a long period of time. It was even more fun to try and apply these crafts into my own pieces. I believe that spending a week with the CWL 320 Writers Resist class has helped me to learn to pay attention to these sensory details and crafts more in my writing and I truly believe that my writing will improve as I impart these techniques into my future pieces.

We explored five different topics that served as inspiration for our writing over the course of the week: coastal apathy, urban blight, income inequality, animal abuse, and racial/ethnic intolerance. Each of these topics is a relevant issue in today’s society. We got to listen to guest speakers talk about some of the topics and relate how writing has helped them in their own careers.

What’s interesting about some of the speakers we heard was how instead of focusing on the negative stuff surrounding the topic in question, they focused on positive aspects and used these as arguments for why we should be paying attention to these issues. For example, Chris Paparo didn’t go into all the doom and gloom of pollution and other aspects of coastal apathy; he talked about ocean life. He went over all the different types of sea creatures that live in our local bays and the ocean. His argument was that if we simply lived in the moment, we wouldn’t miss all this wonderful stuff going on in the water below and that this should serve as enough motivation for us to respect our waters and surrounding environment. We want to keep our waters full of wonderful life! On Friday, we learned about the rich history of Native Americans on Long Island at the Shinnecock Cultural Center. We didn’t focus on talking about all the intolerance that the Native Americans have faced throughout history. Instead, we learned about their way of life as it has evolved throughout the years and this helps us relate to their humanness.

The topic that stuck with me the most was animal abuse. Although we didn’t get to meet Carl Safina in person, the TED talk he did was very moving. It hit a chord deep into my heart. It was so meaningful and sentimental that I was holding back tears by the end of it. Again, rather than talk about all the horrific types and forms of animal abuse there are, Safina takes a different approach; he plays a guilt trip on his audience essentially. He raises this question in the beginning about animals: do they love us? And he answers this question by going through many different examples of animals and talking about the many different characteristics which show that they do indeed have minds and feel things as we humans do. He talks about the familial aspects that are present in wolves and elephants, for example. He also discussed how one day there was a research boat out on the water and for some reason, the dolphins wouldn’t come near the ship. It turned out that one of the researchers on the ship had died in his sleep. How could the dolphins have possibly sensed the ceasing of the heartbeat if they didn’t feel? Another question to ask: animals frequently have opportunities to attack and eat us, but they don’t. Why? Why do we abuse and eat them then?

Carl Safina proves that animals are just like us. They feel exactly as we do. He uses this as an argument for why we should treat them better than we do. Personally, I love animals and I do think animal abuse is a paramount issue in today’s society. People who abuse animals disgust me. In the piece that I wrote which was inspired by this TED talk and animal abuse in general, the beginning opens with teenage boys throwing rocks at geese in a pond. How dare they do that! And the sad thing is that there probably are people today that would consider that to be a fun activity. It’s disgusting. It needs to stop, much like all other injustice and intolerance in this world. All of the pieces that I wrote during my week at Southampton were inspired by the five topics that I explored with my class and I truly hope that they raise awareness to these issues at hand as well.

Then there were people like Neal Gabler and Robby Kinkade who spoke to us specifically about writing. The most useful piece of advice I heard all week was from Robby: write as if no one else is going to read what you are writing. If I follow this advice, I believe that my writing will improve and that writing will come to me more easily since I’m not super concerned about tweaking it for a specific crowd of people. Overall, attending the Southampton Writers’ Conference was a gratifying experience and I may consider going back to the conference next year on my own dime if I can afford it.

Here’s the link to Carl Safina’s TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/carl_safina_what_are_animals_thinking_and_feeling#t-5014

Hello readers!

Thank you for checking out my platform! I am a meteorology major and creative writing minor at Stony Brook University in Long Island, NY. I have loved weather ever since I was little. It has always been my passion and it always will be. It is my dream to go storm chasing in the Midwestern U.S. someday.

One of my major hobbies is called railfanning. This means that I videotape trains for fun and then I edit the videos and post them on YouTube. I love everything about trains but my favorite part is the horn. The horn is so loud and powerful. To hear the horn blasting as a train speeds by is so invigorating! You can find my YouTube channel with all of my train videos here: http://www.youtube.com/railfanningmeteorologistproductions. I also post weather videos on here where I’m either trying to forecast big snowstorms in the Northeast during winter time or severe weather in the summer time. I also occasionally post videos of weather occurring in my area.

When it comes to writing, as well as literature and film, I have a variety of tastes. I absolutely love the horror genre. I love horror films; especially slasher and home invasion films. If I do write a short story, it is most likely to be a scary one. I also like to write poetry. You can view my poetry here: http://www.booksie.com/MegaDa99. All of this is from my high school years. I hope to have more poetry to add to my repertoire after I take a class on poetry in the fall.

I was required to launch a writing platform for the creative writing class that I’m currently taking, so most of my posts for the first month or so will be in relation to assignments for my class. After the class, I may post about anything and everything. Not sure what yet. That’s why the blog is called “Miscellaneous Banter”!