Because I was a day late with the submission of my poem, there's no official feedback response post. I decided to put it up here on my blog in case anyone wanted to read it.

Alone for a Time over Wind swept Waters under Majestic Stars

Before it even starts, my eyes fill with stars.

Watching the day crest over deep blue waters.

My new home afloat, grand and majestic.

A cacophony of voices fade out with the wind.

Surrounded by thousands, to me I was alone.

A step across the channel, for my first time.

The promenade all extravagant, scenery suggesting a good time.

Inundated with attention, we felt like stars.

Many bodies here and there, no chance to be alone.

From below, small crashing waves in choppy waters.

Departure, the send off horn, just about took my wind.

Sunset over a city skyline, majestic.

A floor below, a room of luck, probably named the Majestic.

Seniors and smoke, staring intently, lost in time.

Chiming sirens alarm, clinking of coins, cheers of a winning wind.

Not the jackpot, nor three bars, still there sat three stars.

Most fun could not be had, until international waters.

It was a room of smoke, for which I would not be found alone.

Full of people, great many activities, still a spot to sit alone.

In a corner, graced by silence, page after page, my time precious and majestic.

Beyond the hole in a wall of a hole in a wall; waters.

Reading, thinking, dreaming; so much time.

Day is done, time to dine of a room so grand, chandeliers twinkle like Stars.

Conversations a chorus to gentle music, a delight like a soothing wind.

At the bough, hair dancing in the wind,

Not a soul, no peering eyes or judging glares; alone.

Darkest nights, far from city lights, millions of stars

Twinkle, sparkle, and shine in the majestic

sky. Watch is gone, wrist is bare -- two, three, maybe four hours time,

Gazing in awe among the open waters.

The floors did sway and heave and ho to the mercy of the waters

outside. Land nearby, birds on wind.

Rising from the east, the sun marked the time.

In a cloudless sky it roamed alone.

Crystal clear waters, shone in majestic

blue, reflected and refracted the rays into millions of tiny stars.

Adventure is done, it is time. Longing for more days beneath the stars.

Drowning out sound with wind, dreaming majestic

dreams over open waters. Like many before, I am not alone.

Dangers of writing in public.

Was writing my script for the class assignment as I sit here waiting for my car to get new tires. I thought I was writing a fun piece, not necessarily a comedy, but a fin piece. Had to stop writing because of the feels coming through the words forming in my head and on the page.

There was a knot formed in the throat. Had to stop... I'm in public. >_<

Discombobulated Days

So here I was, working on the poetry assignment due on the 11th. I had selected the closed-form style I was going to use, I was racking my brain for the imagery I wanted to write about. I'm at home, I'm jotting down opening stanzas, erasing, writing, erasing until I had the start. That's what I needed, then I got to fill out the rest of the form with the end words I needed.

The next task was to fill out the lines of six and half more stanzas. I totally got this. I was at my internship stringing words together, trying to paint the scenery with limited words. I'm up Friday night, putting the finishing touches on the poem, re-reading and fixing minor errors that I can see. Adding some punctuation where I thought it needed to be. "Aaaahhhh...." I was done, and thought I was ahead of the deadline. Yeppers, I was on track. I knew I needed to write up a bit about the style I choose, but I wanted to do that with fresh eyes, so I put it off for the next day.

I wake up, get ready for work, have my breakfast, drink my tea, and head out the door. I get to work, clock in, head to my section, review the work log, see the date says 7/12/14, and realize I have made a serious mistake.

Calendars that start with Saturday should be banned for all eternity. ALL ETERNITY.

Short Story Woes...

If you're reading this, chances are you're in the same creative writing class as me. And had the same short story assignment as me.

All week I've been trying to come up with a story. You see, I create worlds within my imagination, I try to dream up how that world works, laws that world abides by -- laws like gravity and such. I imagine people in this world, I imagine creatures and wonders. But I never really imagine a story for any particular person, rather a rich history that the world has evolved from.

This week I tried to narrow the scope to just a person, something I know I have trouble with. I managed, I meandered through the story.  Started, erased. Re-started, erased. Started once again, edited, changed reworded, and typed. Never happy with it. Still I managed to put into words a beginning, a middle and an end.

Bottom of the screen. Word Count: 2282.

Submission link mentions 1000 word count. I did it, I wrote and finished the assignment in time!

Nope, I just happened to go back over the course content and notice that the assignment had more wording from the content page and not the dropbox submission page. 1000 word maximum? Uh-oh.

I reread, edited, reread, edited, erased, moved, shortened, removed. Word count: 1945. But what more could I do? How do I make the story shorter... ugh.

Then, flash of brilliance. What if the story starts right here instead? Word count: 925

Reread... maybe that wasn't such a good idea. Wait? What? Why'd I submit it...?

I think I'll post a link to the longer story in the thread after a few days for people to digest the 925 words I have strung together.

Two days off... in a row

I can't remember the last time I had two days off in a row, where I had practically nothing to do. Usually on my "day offs" I'm still busy with something or other. If I'm not at my job then I'm at school. If i'm at neither place I've usually been busy with a school project or whatever obligation I had that day.

While I have some writing to get done, yesterday and today were actual days off with nothing to do. I was confused. I had no idea what to do, so I slept in yesterday. Binged watched a Netflix original animated series and had birthday dinner with my family.

Oh yeah, I worked on my birthday this last Sunday. Fun times.

2:30am

I hinted at it in my previous post, I am an intern. "Where at?" you ask? Well I'm glad you asked. I intern at KOCO. That's correct, 'That channel 5 news thingie place.'

I am a mass comm major at UCO and am following the path of broadcast, well it's really called professional media. I didn't think there was a degree that could make for a harder question to answer than graphic design, but there you go: Professional Media. Between the two questions "What's a graphic designer?" and "What's a professional media-er-er??" The former has become much easier for me to answer, so I'll just stick with broadcast.

Of course the internship is required for the degree, and I get to pay money to UCO so that I can work for free somewhere else. Nifty concept. I need to figure out how to charge people to be interns. But I digress. No, I'm not studying to be on-air talent, nor am I pursuing content creation (producer)... yet. At the beginning of the internship I learned and watched and got to see how the whole process went down.

Fortunately for me and my schedule it was easier to have me come in at 3:30pm and stay til 6:30pm or 10:30 pm. My time learning and watching spontaneously changed to running the teleprompter. One week my schedule said 'Prompter-tn' and then the next it said 'Prompter' -- funny the difference a missing '-tn' can make. So I started to run teleprompter for Paul Folger and Jessica Schambach or Morgan Chesky and Erielle Reshef. Let's not forget the sports guys either Bryan Keating and Carson Cunningham.

Interesting side-note: Damon Lane and Jonathan Conder don't actually read from a prompter, for 3:30-4:00 minutes they ad lib the heck out of weather! But I do get to push a button that lets them see themselves on the green screen so they know where they are pointing. I hold the power, but I don't abuse it. Weather's an important matter here in Oklahoma.

In week 8, I was presented with a surprise. Okay, not really a surprise. My supervisor gave me a heads up and asked if it was cool to schedule me for the morning shifts for a week so that I could get a feel for that show. And so it was, I was schedule Tuesday through Friday (July 4th Friday) for the 4am shift. Now I'm not like the rest of the world where I can just jump out of bed at 3:30am toss on some clothes and head out to work or whatever. I'm a slow riser, so I got up at 2:30am and I can sure tell you the world is sure different at that time of day. Traffic -- what a nightmare! There are no cars on the road, I had to go the proper speed limit! What's up with that?

The atmosphere was a little different for the most part, and the amount of work that goes into the morning shows was completely different. These guys put on a two and a half hour long newscast compared to the half hour hits in the evening. I didn't do much in the way of 'working' this go around. I got to sit with the camera person-- that's correct. Singular 'Person' as in one person. KOCO uses 5 cameras, but one person. Also, they aren't called a 'Cameraman' or 'Camera Person', rather the position is called 'Robotics'. I'm going to stop with the explanation there, cause I want your imagination to run wild.

Anyway, I got to meet Wendell Edwards and Brad Sowder. Katy Blakey was there, but I didn't actually meet her. Sorta meet Abigail Ogle and gave Dan Thomas and the Tuesday morning producer crew a nice scare my first morning there. Apparently banging on the door to the newsroom and asking to be let is is a big no-no, especially if they don't know you're suppose to be there. Whole other story right there, so moving on.

I sat in the studio for four days while the morning news team delivered Oklahoma the morning news and events that transpired the day before. Got to see the magic of weather on the green screen and just how crazy a person looks when walking back and forth in front of a giant bright green wall. Abigail Ogle was getting in some anchor practice this week, which put the engineering department in a bit of a bind. They had no one to cover teleprompter -- OH! But wait, they have an intern here those days! Eric to the rescue.

So for an hour or so each day I ran the teleprompter for Abbie... or is it Abby? Maybe Ms. Ogle. I've no idea really... but she knows I ran prompter for her. In any case, my week of 2:30am is done and over. I managed to meet some new people, learn a few more things, get some more experience (I ran cameras for 3 blocks on the Thursday show), and I managed to not mess anything up. All in all it was a good week, but I just can't do 2:30am... that's just inhumane. Really. Just ask my bloodshot, caffeine widened eyes.

Going Forward

Greetings viewers of my words,

As part of my summer education, I will be writing blog posts here for the duration of my creative writing class. I will attempt to put into words details from my day, random thoughts, or even long winded rants.

I've gotten a late start in the class, if you consider enrolling on the first day of class 'late'. While it would seem I took this class in the heat of the moment, it is part of a longer story.  I'm a mass communications major at UCO, and took a short film production class along with an internship class. Both these courses together put me at five credit hours. Unfortunately, the office of financial aid never saw fit to inform me that I require six credit hours for my financial aid award to kick in.

This predicament left me in a bit of a quandary, I needed one more credit hour. Due to my internship and the changing hours, I can't commit to a schedule time class last minute, especially a morning class. This week I'm doing the morning shifts: 4am - 10am. This ruled out most of the morning classes, being that you can't miss 4 days. So I sought out the online classes and narrowed it down to Creative Writing II, Introduction to Economics, and Regional World Geography. Of the list provided to me for summer courses, these were the three I could personally stand to take and not take a large hit to my gpa.

There it was, this list, in all its 'I can't believe I have to pick a class last minute' glory. Economics, while I do have an inclination to learn about it.  Self study isn't my strongest attribute when it comes to forced learning. Regional World Geography, sure I need to keep up with the new countries, the countries that don't exist anymore from my elementary school geography days. It's just the names though, along with capitals, I just can't remember names. Brings back memories.

Third grade, learning the states and their capitals. I get picked by the teacher, she asks "Eric, what's the capital of Alabama?" I didn't know, I couldn't remember. I knew Florida and Georgia, even knew New York and Minnesota, but not Alabama. Now, I'll point out that my name is Eric Montgomery, while reminding you that this was third grade and I was like eight or nine and was just starting to learn this stuff. I shrugged my shoulders, looked at the teacher and said "I don't know." She scoffed. She scoffed! I mean, who scoffs at a child in a learning environment? After that she goes "What's your last name?" I answer, then she asks "Now what's the capital of Alabama?" I thought, but wasn't connecting the dots she must have thought were overly obvious. I shrugged and said "I don't know." The humiliation from having to be told that Montgomery was the capital of Alabama in such a way took away my desire to want to learn about geography. So that's out.

I have taken creative writing II before, when I was seeking my degree in graphic design. I may have actually taken it twice, then again it might have been creative writing I that I took twice. In any case, I was hesitant to take the class. Seeing that the instructor for the class was Daro, and having taken his 'Writing for Comics/Graphic Novels' class I opted for the class. Took me five hours to get enrolled in this class, but here I am.

My financial aid has gone through, I'm getting a chance(read: forced) to work on my writing skills and hash out some ideas.  Ideas I might be able to use in 'Writing Science Fiction' with Daro. >Insert evil cackle<

Well, that's all I'll write for now, this post was initially suppose to be about my internship. Oh well, that'll be for next time.