Applying to UB
Statement of Personal Interest submitted to the University of Baltimore MFA program in Creative Writing and Publishing Arts, February 2010:
My professional career has been centered on the spoken language, first as an actor and then as a radio and television broadcaster. The nuance of language is one of the primary tools at the disposal of an actor. This is also true of a broadcaster, with the added dimension that one is actually formulating the language and not only interpreting the words. As an interviewer, for example, one well chosen word can make all the difference in eliciting a response from an interviewee. As an on-air host the careful choice of words will conjure up impressions and information for the listener in a meaningful way.Having come from such a purely aural background I have been somewhat in awe of writers. Writing has always struck me as an intensely, almost viscerally, creative enterprise, and something that I could never aspire to. This is not to say that I didn’t write. I have very much enjoyed the writing associated with broadcasting, whether it has been program notes for symphony concerts, articles for radio publications, or dramatizing radio plays that I directed. Since immigrating to the United States in 1997 I have also found it very rewarding to document the experience in a steady stream of letters back home. However, because creative writing in its purest form, as in poetry or fiction, has never been something that has been innate in me, I never thought of myself as a writer. Yet I came to realize that nonfiction writing also has great value with its own particular strand of creativity. I find myself wanting to write about my experiences of becoming a citizen of another country, and about people and events as an extension of the countless interviews that I have conducted as a broadcaster.As these thoughts began to formulate in my mind, I discovered the Creative Writing and Publishing Arts program at the University of Baltimore, and it seemed to fit perfectly with the thoughts I had been having about wishing to explore writing creative nonfiction. Added to this, my second major for my Bachelor of Arts degree was History of Art, and I took Art as a subject in grade school, so the idea of working practically with the design and production of writing is another dimension that I would find very exciting."http://www.ubalt.edu/cla_template.cfm?page=1465
Having been accepted into the program for the Fall semester this year, I thought I had better set up a forum where I would be tempted to write more than just sporadically. So, after much internal resistence and dithering about putting myself "out there" -- voila! -- A Blog.