O/B: Week Ten

This is it.
The moment I've been waiting for since I dumped my picture-books into the bathtub as a six-year-old child, proclaiming I wanted "the real thing"; the moment I'd craved since that child grew into a bold teen who fawned over T.S. Eliot instead of T-Pain, since my fingers first found cathartic pleasure in stringing letters into lyrical phrases to say more powerful things than my mouth could even manage. The moment when I can call myself... a writer.
This is it.

The spring edition of Outside Bozeman is officially here, and I am officially published. My eight articles are not much, and they're neither the most beautiful pieces of writing I've produced, nor the most engaging, but they're out there for the world to see, and that's one hell of a foot in the door. The road could have been shorter, simpler, and less strenuous, for certain-- but I'm glad it was not, and I'm thankful for every mistake that now makes me a better, tighter writer.

BUT-- there simply isn't time to revel in the beauty of what's done... there's still so much more to do! Production deadline for Cast, the fishing guide, is set for the thirtieth of this month, and I have several articles to write for this publication, as well as a few other tasks before the craziness of copy-editing resumes next week.

In the "post-mortem" meeting for the 2014 Cast, I pitched a couple ideas that I'll get to write about in the 2015 edition. The one I'm most looking forward to is a piece on river stewards, where I'll get to highlight some of the great non-profits that work to keep Montana's rivers clean and healthy. I'm especially excited about this because it's the closest I think I can get to eco-crit/lit. with this internship. Though Cast isn't as big of a publication as O/B, it will be a nice challenge to see what I can produce in a limited space that's working within a niche with which I'm not as familiar (I'm sadly just a novice fisherwoman). The best part about this magazine though, is now that I've been through the production process with the O/B spring issue, Cast will be much easier to prepare for.

Right now it seems to be deadline week. Aside from the overwhelming amount of class work for MSU that I have due and my production deadline, I've been charged with article uploads for the spring edition. It's an incredibly tedious task, and I've been getting through the 128 page magazine at the rate of about 2-3 articles an hour. I've managed to work on uploads for four straight days, and am approaching the half-way point. It's slow progress, but it also teaches me to be careful and meticulous-- traits important to hone for the next round of copy-edits, and my own writing.

Other tasks this week on top of writing and uploads include checking the hyperlinks for the digital edition of O/B for the sales department, and working the booth for MSU Friday. I had a re-alignment meeting with Mike at the beginning of the week and thankfully he offered to give me an extension on a few excel spreadsheets he asked me to work through, so those are off my plate for now. Something he said to me in the meeting was nice to hear, "Ask for help before you sink, not after". I think too often with school and work, we feel like, in some way, we're not allowed to reach out when things become a struggle. Personally, I feel ashamed when I can't manage everything that's thrown at me, and I really hate asking for help in any way. But honestly, had I not taken the deadline extension when offered, I would have sacrificed the quality of the job I did-- which wouldn't help anyone. The lesson? Everyone gets overwhelmed, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT-- that's stepping up to the plate, even if it means admitting you need to take a step back.

This is a busy one, and I'm now certain that it's going to be a very long five weeks...