O/B: Week Three

Despite the warming weather, this week has brought with it a storm... of new projects, responsibilities, and learning experiences. Though I know much of the work I'm doing is rather menial, I find that I'm really enjoying my experiences with the magazine. I'm swimming in assignments, but I am staying afloat. It's an inseparable part of my nature that I can't help but feel invigorated by the stress of a deadline and motivated by the pressure from the editors to excel.

This past week kicked off with an art show at Sola cafe, to celebrate and thank the contributors to the magazine and also functioned as a meet-and-greet for all the writers and new staff, all focused around the issue-published art from the past 15 years of production (bonus: all profits went to Friends of Hyalite, local NPO, to help  keep the road accessible). I met Parks Reece, a local artist whose work was as energetic and vibrant as he was. The show was also a great opportunity to chat with the team outside of the office, and to get to know the editors a bit better over a few glasses of wine. Mike brought in a wonderful array of salads (roasted zucchini and goat cheese, yumm!) and lots of pizza, while Sola supplied us with beer, wine, or hard-cider to make the night seem even smoother. I can't speak for everyone, but I had a surprisingly great time in such a lively atmosphere and found myself reluctant to leave. 

Once we were all loosened up, the week at the office felt more natural than previous days. I'm spending 32+ hours a week in house and find it nearly impossible not to check my work e-mail even when I'm not. But on that note, I'm getting more and more involved and learning a lot about the way the magazine is set up. As a writer and editor, I'm responsible for proofreading, fact-checking, copy-editing my own work... as well as the 60 submitted articles for the spring edition. Heavy load? Yes. Looming deadline? Yes. Capable of completion? Yes. And as I found out today, hard work does not go unrewarded. 

I've now completed a blog post for Outside Bozeman online, and have turned in my first two articles ahead of deadline. I'm in the process of writing an additional five that range from charities to raptors (and beer), creative writing to infographics. Despite the stress from researching and writing, it's pretty cool to be able to have a finished product, however small the piece, and have it be yours- through and through. Too often for school projects it's easy enough to scrape by with something half-finished. But whats becoming clear at O/B is if I'm putting my name on it, it damn well better be great. 

In my first "this is where we stand" meeting with Mike, we went over to-do lists and he explained in more depth some of the tasks I'll have after we meet the deadline for the spring issue. My brain has mentally blocked out some of the tasks farther in the future, but some that I am excited for are the monthly blog assignments where it's mandatory that I have an "outdoor adventure". On the list is fat biking, ranger-guided wilderness walks, skydiving, Yellowstone snowmobiling adventures, and many other thrilling options. I couldn't be more excited! It's just now a matter of finding the damn time to adventure then write... 

At the same meeting, Mike also had edited more of my work and we were able to go through it together which was so rewarding. His feedback made a lot of sense to me, and I could actually anticipate some of the changes he was going to make, which means I'm progressing as an editor and learning to be a cleaner writer. Hell yeah! Some of the things we discussed were balanced personification, or the idea of feminizing the landscape to build a relationship if I also masculine it in places as well. The eco-critic in me cringes, but I see the relevance and utility of this decision. 

It became clear to me that I need to work on precise punctuation, since many of the errors were ill-placed semi-colons or dashes that had a large effect on the way the work read overall.

So much happens in a week that it becomes really difficult for me to sum it all up in a blog. Overall, the tone of the week was productive, with Tuck and Mike both checking like rather curt mother-hens to make sure I was on point with my work. I'm looking forward to reaching this deadline and moving on to new assignments, and excited to see what this next week brings since my writing will be on the line.

O/B: Week Two

There's a lot of fucking stress involved with this internship.

Week one can be summarized as... hopeful. Week two? Terrified. I have turned in a blog post for O/B that focused on the Wild and Scenic Film Festival in Bozeman on the 21. There were a lot of potent editorial changes that helped strengthen my writing, and I'm really grateful for the opportunity to grow in those ways. I know I need to be careful to always use the oxford comma, and I need to work on tightening up my language in many ways-- starting with OMITTING NEEDLESS WORDS. This work space will function as a practice field.

I still hold fast and strong to my opinion that the editors are on my side (in the end). Mike and Tuck both have been super helpful and thorough while explaining some of my mistakes, which I really appreciate.

So far this week I was assigned my articles for the spring issue. I have five main articles (I won't go into complete details here for fear of infringement). They focus on running, drinking, wilderness areas, raptor conservation and the outlook, which is a photo-accompanied piece. I should also have a gear review on the horizon, but I can't comprehend that quite yet. These are due by a deadline that makes me queasy, Feb. 2nd. With a full semester load, capstone, 2 jobs? Bring it...

______________________

Some things I'm learning:

1. Don't ask needless questions. If you can find the answer in some way yourself, do that. Always.

2. Don't assume you know more than anyone.

3. Anticipating something will only bring problems. Example: There was a clarification issue about the publication of an online article. After not hearing back from either of the editors for 30 minutes, and dealing with a time-sensative article, I published. Mistake. Not only did this bring me enormously spiked stress levels (on the night of my birthday, to top it all off) but it made me look like an idiot, sending out chains of inquisitive emails and finally taking the wrong action upon myself. Lesson learned, I suppose.

4. USE AND LOVE YOUR STYLE GUIDE: I wrote my first article and wanted to shoot myself when half the corrected errors from the publisher were right in front of me in the guide. Reliability-0.

5. The single return is the best keyboard short-cut in the books. Shift + enter. Badaboom.

Today we began looking at the beginning steps of copy-editing for the spring issue. Thank goodness for less OCD interns. And vodka.

Outside Bozeman: Beginnings

I am officially an intern with Outside Bozeman magazine. That's a pretty cool phrase to be able to say. This is truly the beginning of something, and as I have my first few "days" behind me, I can say I still remain relatively optimistic about this. 

Despite several... warnings about taking on this particular magazine and editor/publisher, Mike, I haven't felt anything more than nervousness upon my first day's completion. I think Mike is a great writer and editor, and a hard boss, which most likely will make me both a better writer and stronger person. Though I don't expect this to be easy in any way, my first few assignments have  been received with little to no kickback, and I find myself anticipating what's to come next. 

My first project was assigned by Mike upon accepting me as an intern -- I was to take a "How Far Will You Go" photo in the Dominican Republic (I was going for a few days) as well as submit ideas for the spring issue of the magazine. The next issue was set to be released in mid March, so the sunny environment of the Dominican helped me get in the mood to be thinking about spring in Bozeman. I submitted a series of ideas, of which I'm most looking forward to a running guide. It still seems strange, when paging through the most recent issue of Outside Bozeman, that the ideas I just submitted could be published, immortalized in print, on the pages I'm turning. My words may take up space there some day soon... that's the hope, right? What I find most appealing about the suffrage I know will go into these next few months, is that at the end of it all, I'll be a published writer. That's worth more than anything they can throw at me. 

Speaking of, my next few assignments have been tedious and, I'm sure, designed to inundate me with boring, administrative tasks. Chris, the sales manager, gave me the job of paging through the online edition of the winter issue and fault-checking the hyperlinks. I needed to consider both placement of the link on the page and the effectiveness of the hyperlink itself. After meticulously checking 128 pages of the issues (~140 hyperlinks) and having hand written their placements, I noticed an attachment on the email from Chris. I really wish I had seen it three hours earlier, as he included all the information I have been writing down manually, as well as specific locations he wanted the links to be. So, first lesson learned: always double check everything, or you end up wasting time. 

I met with Mike last night and got a key to the office, a work email, O/B swag, etc., but the most exciting moment was when we sat down and he ripped apart my resume and sample writings. I actually loved every minute of it because it's such an invaluable experience to be able to sit down with an editor and hear first hand what he liked and didn't like and be able to utilize his experiences to better my writing. Though he categorized much of my writing as verbose, he said he was willing to continue reading because he enjoyed my style (score!).

In this first and quick meeting, I learned the differences between hyphens, en dashes and em dashes, and became embarrassingly aware of my tendency to be inconsistent in voice and tone. Mike helped me look through some of my writing about the Patagonian dam systems and pointed out choice words that were too strong, that carried too much of an agenda, and he helped me hear how words like beautiful and intricate carried two different implications. Honestly, I learned a lot in just this first meeting which gives me hope for those that will follow. I've started what I'm calling a "survival guide" to editing, and trying to update it each day when I learn something from this experience. Today I found E.B.White through the mouth of Zinsser to be most encouraging " You must take an obsessive pride in the smallest details of your craft. And be willing to defend what you've written " (On Writing Well 298). 

Let the obsession begin.