Personal Reflection

 I am Miles Lomanno, and I am an environmental studies major and writing minor at Christopher Newport University. My favorite kind of writing is creative writing, mostly in the form of short stories, poems, or songs. I'd say creative writing is also a strength of mine, with it being something that I have a lot of practice with since I often just do it in my free time. I have trouble writing with my own voice, so when writing a song or poem I will often get in the mindset of taking on the persona of a character I create during the writing process. My writing can also be too short and concise sometimes, even when I think I have added sufficient details, so I'd say my inability to fill a page is another weakness of mine. Most of the writing I do is in an inherently shorter format, which probably explains this. I also struggle to get started on writing something, but once I start, ideas tend to keep flowing so I don’t have much trouble continuing.

In the future, my goal is to become a zookeeper or something of the sort, which does not seem like it would correlate much with writing. It will probably be difficult to get any writing job at all. However, if the work or income from the zoo proves to be insufficient, or even if I just get bored, I will try to either take on freelance writing jobs, write and attempt to publish Lovecraft-esque short stories or Vonnegut-esque novels, and/or try to get a job as an environmental journalist. It is also possible that I could do reports or studies of the animals at the zoo in which I will work.

A goal of mine in this class is to work on getting that spark I need to start a writing project, whether that be for classwork or for leisurely writing. I intend to not start and end an assignment on the same day, affecting the quality of my work, as I have done in some classes in the past.