Genre has been a huge focal point for our in-class workshops and it was one of the major concerns I had going into my Capstone project. When I initially had the idea for a music website, I was playing around with too many ideas. It was going to be an anti-gossip column, it was going to be Skimm-like news site about the music industry, and it was also supposed to incorporate album reviews. I had tons of exciting concepts, because I love music and have interned in the industry for two years. But I had to let that go somehow. Admittedly, it was great at first to have a plethora of options. However, I knew that my project would lack quality if it was bogged down by quantity.
There have been times in the past when I started too broad with a writing assignment. One instance that comes to mind is my first semester of freshman year, when I had to write a comparative literature paper using Maya Angelou’s work. I was far too overzealous with my thesis and ended up making a wild claim by the end of the paper about female writers’ representation in America. I used several outside sources that I did not need and it was utter chaos. It’s one of those papers that was a mess from the start and I tried to claim more than I needed to in the five pages I had.
That experience gives me pause now, because I can remember to collect my thoughts and narrow my focus. I was helpful to look back on an assignment like that one and use it as motivation to choose one thing for this Capstone. Now, I have settled on doing a digestible news site for music technology. I most definitely want to take stab at a longer op-ed piece, but it will remain in line with the shorter articles. It will be informative and up-to-date. That is my goal.