I've always thought of myself as a storyteller instead of a writer. I love telling the story about how I was at Clay Bucholz's no-hitter or the funny old man that copied my movements at the grocery store. I like to tell stories all the time through pictures, video, and obviously through my writing. It's been fascinating throughout the evolution of social media and Facebook. People started out thinking it was kind of a cool thing and today major corporations breakdown every single one of their movements on the site. But while my photography style and advancement has certainly changed, …

Last night I attended an event put on by the Ball State Creative Writing Department. It was the first in this year’s series of visiting writers, and the star of the night was published author Michael Martone. I had read some of Martone’s work, but never actually seen him in person, and the impression I got from his appearance when I first walked into the room was one of an older professor-type who would be very likely to call out anyone in the room he may catch using a cell phone or iPod during his presentation. I was wrong. Before …

I sat on the plane with my notebook in front of me writing diligently about the stories I heard while visiting my family in Maryland. “Looks like your writing the next novel there” the business man sitting to my right said. I explained to him that I am an English major and that over the summer I like to read and write so I don’t get rusty. It turns out the business man was in the publishing industry; the industry I want to be a part of. A couple of weeks before I found myself on the plane, …

I'm nothing special. I don't have a photographic memory—I can't memorize a website's URL if I find something cool or interesting online. An easy solution is to bookmark that page. Simple enough. As a college student, I'm always on the move and I don't always have my laptop with me. If bookmarked an item on my web browser, I wouldn't be able to access it from the computer lab. As a work-around, I would copy URLs, paste them into an email, and send it to myself. It was ugly and unorganized, but it worked. Last fall, …