The Line

They built the story from the bottom and built it up from there using personal information. I thought that it was really good that they didn't use experts or historians. The people that lived through it are the real experts. They talked to people in 4 towns which could have resulted in better info since they didn't have to spend time looking all over. They used video, photos, and interviews from people that lived in those towns and the people that went to war or had family in the war in those towns.

Getting Ready to Write a Story

The topic I'm going to go with is the one about every store having their own credit cards and if it's better to maybe just have one Visa card that can do it all.
I would start off by going to a handful of stores (ex: Meijer, Best Buy, Rodgers and Hollands, Maurices, and Victoria's Secret) and getting information on opening credit cards there. All of these stores are different in their own way and it is possible that they have different rates. I would also try going to Rodgers and Hollands and ask the staff questions about their card (ex: on average how many people open a card to buy merchandise? is it usually on expensive jewlery?). It would also be interesting to be able to find people that do have mulitple cards and talk to them about why they chose to have many cards instead of one, and how do they decide what stores they own cards to.
A problem i could have with this story is that it could be too long to publish in a newspaper, but it could be good for a financial magazine.

Article Ideas

-People's fascination with yard ornaments
-Christmas lights all year long. Why do it?
-Young people, buying expensive jewlery. Could the money go to something important like school?
-Every store has their own credit card. Is it better to just have one Visa card with only one bill a month?
-Subdivisions taking over. Someday will all the fields be gone?
-Christmas decorations out before Halloween is even here.

"Surprise" according to Murray

How does Donald Murray define "surprise?"
-"In exploring the world, a writer should also look for what isn't there as much as what is, hear the unsaid as well as the said, imagine what might be."
-"The writer makes use of every sense-and even develops a few new ones."
(need to finish)

Donald Murray

Assuming I was a "professional writer," and I never had the privledge to meet Mr. Donald Murray, after reading his last few published articles and his obituary I would have to assume that I would gain a major respect for "real-life" writing. Mr. Murray published many articles about his late wife, that came down with a major illness. He wrote about his strugles with the illness and how it afftected his life and lives over others, without actually pronouncing to the world that it was all happening in his life. I learned that I would rather write about the "real-life" scenarios that actually affect me as well as the many other people in this world. Murray's words helped me realize that life is about the trials and tribulations of other peoples lives in the world and he sent out a sense of warming to the world through the Boston Globe unprenounced to everyone else.