A Summer at The Chautauquan Daily

Dear Reader,

Here we are, 6 months into whatever journey the Slog holds. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. It took me a while to commit to doing a blog regularly, but now with over 50 posts under my belt and a litany of enjoyment from watching and re-watching, reading and re-reading, and just plain ole thinking, I have to say it’s been a great experience.

For now, though, I must move on to another great experience: covering morning lectures for The Chautauquan Daily. Chautauqua, NY is a sleepy lakeside town two hours from Cleveland. For most of the year, it’s populace is sparse. The Daily itself only employs 2 full-time employees. But for 9 weeks in summer, it becomes a mecca of culture and discourse. The newspaper hires college students from across the nation to fill out its staff every summer. Around 6,000 residents return every year to enjoy everything the Institute offers. It is a popular internship at Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, one that came highly-recommended by my friends who had previously interned here.

The morning lecture position is a coveted one because of the breadth of coverage. It is also one of the hardest, with lectures happening daily at 10:45 a.m. with a deadline between 3-4 p.m. Some of the people passing through Chautauqua this summer are Jon Krakauer (author of Into Thin Air and Into the Wild), Kal Penn (the Harold & Kumar films, Dr. Kutner on House, M.D.), Erik Larson (author of The Devil in the White City and In the Garden of Beasts), and, at the end of the summer, famous actress/comedienne Carol Burnett.

I’ll be posting my coverage of their talks here, on my Facebook page (which you should totally like, if you haven’t already!), and through Twitter.

I came into 2015 ready to finish college and begin my career as a writer in earnest. So I had a promise: if I was going to allow myself to continue to tell people that I was a “writer” – complete with pages of words strung together into sentences to form stories – then I would need to be able to walk the talk. I wanted to show people what I would do, given absolute freedom and opportunity and I got to do that. It inspired me to challenge myself to continually come up with ideas for content and I am by no means done with SamFlynn7.

After my first two days of the Daily’s orientation, I couldn’t be more happy with my decision. The town is utterly unique in culture and spirit. My dedication to delivering my best work here will limit what I can do here. After an initial break, my hope is to return for (at least) a post a week until the internship ends in late August. All is not lost, though. I’m already committed to reviewing True Detective‘s sophomore season.

I know. You were worried.

After that, it’s (hopefully) smooth-sailing into publishing my novel, Tears of Elmaya, which I am proud to say will be done THIS YEAR!  It is my first and biggest passion in my 22+ year life is to publish my version of a high fantasy epic. It is a journey started when I was 11 (yes, really). And by hell or high water, I will accomplish that dream.

I am currently on the search for agents, specifically up-and-coming ones with interest in speculative fiction. It’s exciting that, now, I can say I am a writer, with all the responsibilities, neuroses, worries, anxieties, and joy that comes along with it. I am also working on my debut mixtape as a rap artist, self-titled SPF. 

I have songs recorded but more left to record, mix, and master. Since I am neither a jack-of-all-trades nor a master-of-one of those, it’s taking some time. Despite promising a summer release, it’s looking more like this fall. But no longer than that! The next thing I know, I’m going to have a Street King Immortal situation on my hands.

Now, I actually do have to get back to work. I am finding the whole “having a job” thing really puts a cramp on my 16-hour-a-day sleep schedule. So I’m going to go nap now. Thanks so much for reading these past 6 months and supporting me as an artist and a writer. To every single reader out there: I love you. To every other aspiring writer: the journey’s just beginning.

-SPF