Live from camp: Overcoming a bad case of the Mondays

Monday is a day with a bad reputation. Some people believe that nothing good can happen on Monday, and it is useless trying to salvage it.

I woke up in the morning with the feeling that those statements were true. After staying up a little too late the previous night (it seemed a good idea at the time), I woke up feeling sore and tired. I stumbled out of bed to grab an English muffin, lacking imagination for anything more exciting. I put on the first things out of my wardrobe, then sat around wishing I was still asleep. I looked at the clock and realized with a jolt that I was almost late. Of course, I thought. It’s Monday.

The classroom in the morning was quiet, which suited me just fine. I thumbed through the newspaper, reading headlines. When Annie came in and began to review the days activities, I did my best to wake up my brain and get the gears turning.

Part of the problem for my lack of enthusiasm of the day was my story. I didn’t know what to do. My rough draft was a mess, bits and pieces of a story that I couldn’t find an angle or a place for. I felt frustrated and had little hope that any edits could save it.

Dymanh came over to talk about what I had so far, and it was encouraging to learn that he did not think it was a lost cause. I learned I just needed to mix the bits and pieces around to make them fit, just like a puzzle. I was missing a few pieces, but those could be found, and in the end everything would work out perfectly.

Half an hour later I was still trying to fit the pieces in. The beginning of my story bothered me. I didn’t feel like the lede really worked. The first angle on it was sappy, the second was too factual and too broad, the third didn’t tie in with the rest of the story. Finally I pushed myself back from my article just to think. My dad, an English teacher, always told me not to think to much about writing, just write it. But now, I needed a little time to just think about what I wanted to say. I needed a purpose. My story was about Cambodians moving from the city to the suburbs, so I needed to start with that.

Farther down the page in my story, I did have a good example of this migration. I tried using as my lede.

It was like magic. The example fit into the beginning perfectly and created pathways for me to talk about the other parts in my story. With this one magic piece, I could fit in all the others. I was on a roll, writing and writing and reluctantly stopping for a lunch break. I felt happy, ecstatic, joyful! Everything was working out. After lunch I sat out in the middle of the sidewalk with Lorna and Kim and just soaked up some sunshine. Then when I got back to the classroom I practically bowled Dymanh over with an enthusiastic report of my story.

So this Monday didn’t turn out too badly after all. It turns out it was just one piece in my way of solving a writing puzzle, one thundercloud blocking out the sun, one bad reputation getting in the way of a great day.

- Kaia Findlay, Introduction to Journalism Camp ’11