O/B: Week Eleven

This week at O/B has been nothing short of overloaded.

However, I did have a lot of chances to be productive and really work hard to get things done, which is always good practice (because, inevitably the "real" world will be just as demanding.) Wednesday was a day entirely spent plugging away at the article uploads that I've been on for the past couple weeks. The process is tedious and boring, but needs to get done. I spent a long day in the office Friday (9am-11:30pm) finishing these up, and damn it feels good to be done.

I was able to take a break on Friday to go out with another intern to MSU Friday to represent Outside Media Group for the incoming freshman. I ended up having a really great time talking with prospective students and getting to give advice about MSU, O/B, and the awesome valley we're all nestled in. I was surprised to notice some of the trends in questions I got, like most freshman wanting to now super close locations for recreation, probably because most won't have a car on campus. This means that I can use this kind of observation to better tailor the MSU Pocket Guide facebook posts to reflect the kind of thing freshman are going to be into, which potentially means more "friends", and more $$ for O/B. It was a rewarding experience, and gave me a much needed break from the hum-drum of working away at my desk in the office (8 hours there can be taxing).

Monday was the deadline for Cast, so I spent a good chunk of time this weekend working on the articles I wrote for the guide, and fact-checking our sidebars. This is a collaborative process with the sales team, which I realized can be tricky. Even though my deadline to get this stuff in was the 30th, the sales team didn't quite have all the ads laid out yet, so Tuck and I will have to wait. This can be more stressful for us, but as long as we can get the rest of the copy-editing done we should be okay.

Monday also brought an onslaught of meetings, an intern meeting with Mike and the post-mortem meeting for the spring edition, and then the summer issue idea session. Pizza and beer was had by all. I'll talk about how these went and what we discussed in next weeks' post.
For now, I must edit!

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...

O/B: Week Nine

Mike graciously gave me a week off for spring break, which I took full advantage of by heading to the Netherlands for a couple of days and biking all around Amsterdam. Had a blast, but now back to the grind.

The magazine is done-- and it's incredibly rewarding to know that on Wednesday the months of hard work will be held in my hands, finished, and I'll be a published writer. After countless late night sessions, meticulous edits, and a slightly buzzed-for-creativity captioning session, production is done. I learned a lot about the publishing process, and I'm grateful for the experiences I've had here. I can look back and know that when I submit a query or am assigned an article for a future publication, I know what's happening on the other end of the process as well, which means I'll be familiar with ways to make it a little bit easier (like proper formatting!).

Out of all the writing I did for the spring edition of O/B, my raptor center article was the most important to me. I felt compelled to portray the center the way I experienced it, and it was the only article I wrote that required face-to-face communication. I felt obligated to "repay" Becky and Jordan for the great work they were doing in any way I could. In this case, through a well-written and thorough article. Well. In the process of all that editing, my eyes must have glazed over a few errors in the text. I made an awful mistake and called Jordan, the assistant director, Jason, and never caught the error. Luckily, Mike called me into his office on Monday and we went through the article, which by pure luck had be edited by a volunteer at the center who fixed the error and found a few others... like a bird named Chaco that I said "fluttered from perch to perch", but who, in fact, cannot fly. These small errors killed me. I'm a clean writer, and if I want to be a journalist or anything similar, there is no room for those kinds of mistakes. I have to work on tightening up my prose and fact-checking. Lesson learned. 

This week is reminiscent of my first here-- I'm in charge of uploading articles from the spring edition to our website. I remember how confusing and complicated this seemed to me in the beginning, and now-- thought it is still incredibly time consuming and equally frustrating at points-- I feel like I can take it on no problem. It's cool to see that kind of organic growth goin' on. 

O/B: Week Eight

Layout's were done this week, meaning we have a full mock-up of the magazine, and the editorial team segments it into three parts based on page number. We then use Adobe to go through it digitally (though Mike does it all by hand) and look for aesthetic problems, like too much white space or mal-aligned photos to text, as well as another round of copy-edits to be sure nothing has slipped by us as far as the writing goes. Each editor (there are four, if you include me) looks over each section, with Mike doing the final approval of our comments. We will then repeat this process again (tomorrow) when the creative team has finished their corrections. We also have a meeting today where we will brainstorm titles and subheadings for the articles, which will be worked into the final edition.

This past week was unpredictable. There were a lot of assignments for the magazine that were last-minute, like a few sentence captions for photos, or fact-checking assignments. The proofing is tedious work, but it keeps me on my toes and makes me more alert to the small errors that pop up in my own writing.

We begin our post-mortem sessions for the Cast Fishing Guide today, which means assignments will begin coming later this week. I just keep telling myself I'm halfway there!

O/B: Week Seven

This week was a slow one, comparatively. Turned in two blog posts-- one on winter riding and one on  for the MSU Pocket Guide blog on study snacks to avoid gaining weight in the winter. They both came out rather quickly and easily, but necessitated much editing.

I had a good lesson this week-- Mike and I went over the study snacks blog, and got into a minor dispute over the nature of the type of food I chose: mostly healthy, and unintentionally meat-free items. I wholeheartedly disagreed with his critique, but it took me a while to realize that wasn't the point-- and the change was then made, and the article published. Respect the editor, respect your boss, they have the final say.
After all of this, I had a few additional changes to make before publishing the blog on a Friday night, so I made them and went home, forgetting about it. Saturday morning, while glancing through the online version, I realized that the edit session with Mike hadn't been saved, and the published version reflected the original draft of the article... and all it's errors. I had to go back through it quickly and try to remember everything Mike had corrected. In a way, it felt like a blessing in disguise because it tested my ability to retain what Mike had taught me and spot those small errors in the text again. He hasn't mentioned anything to  me, so I think I must have caught (nearly) all of them.

Copy-edits for spring are done, and now we wait for the end of the week to proofread and finalize the layout. Assignments for Cast will soon be allocated, and then we will repeat the process. This week one of the other editorial interns quit, which I have mixed opinions about. It means less competition, but now more work for me.

Today I'm bogged down with administrative tasks-- sorting through excel spread sheets, de-duping, updating, organizing, etc. It  makes my head hurt, and is completely uninteresting, as well as rather hard to understand and make decisions about because of the nature of the material. It's frustrating and slow work, but it's sort of nice to have a break from the editing and writing... for a little while.

O/B: Week Six

Stressful week. Copy edits, re-writes, more deadlines.

The week was a slow one for all those not in the editorial department. We're getting closer and closer to our production dates, so articles are reaching the final stages of their drafting. Once an article has been written, it becomes a draft which is then fact-checked (by an intern), and goes through it's first round of copy-editing. A second round is done by an out-of-house editor who checks for content consistency, and then the drafts are sent to the managing editor to be copy-edited again, laid-out in the appropriate category, and for any changes to be made. These drafts are then approved by Mike, who does the final round of editing and sends the finished article to the writer for consent. This process ends this coming week, so the art editors can have the week to work on creative layout and photography. Then, next week, we will begin proofreads of the mock-up, and the issue will be go through the final stages of editing before print.

This week I did some editing, then some writing. I've been assigned two more blog posts, and had to work on the Outlook, a more creative photo-accompanied piece for the beginning of the mag., as well as some rewrites for the articles I already turned in.

Things are still going well overall, and every day I seem to learn something more about the language that I didn't know (like "cleanup" is one word when used as a noun!). I feel stressed about the amount of work I know I have coming up (Mike assigns to-do lists so we are always responsible for deadlines, which is stressful), on top of school, but I am motivated by knowing this is my last semester and that this work will be paying off in the long run.

More to come.

O/B: Week Five

This week at Outside Bozeman was one focused on reflection.

My tasks have been short and focused, as I'm copy-editing and fact checking the 60+ articles we've received for the spring issue. I've found I really enjoy the process-- it fits in well with my natural inclination for organization-- but it makes me painfully aware of how many disorganized writers there are. How on earth do you not realize that a link like this --> (http:\\www.nocommonsense.com/outside-bozeman-cannot-prin?t-this\345869799199) 

CAN NEVER be printed in an issue? It's a big pet peeve of mine, having to fix all of the errors because the writer was too lazy.

Which brings me to formatting. On what planet is it okay to write in Comic Sans? What magazine have you written for previously where you didn't include a by-line, or word count? Why would you put three spaces when beginning a new sentence? Or type in grey font? The benefit of doing all this work and experiencing these errors (and how much they annoy me) means that the next time I go to have something published or to send a query to a magazine, I can make sure I avoid these same problems and KEEP CONSISTENT... because I know how valuable time is for an editor. 

Each day of editing-- each article, really-- teaches me something new, and my style guide is now covered in ink with amendments I find necessary to make as I wade through the waters of compound adjective hyphenation, dangling modifiers, and serial commas. I know so much more already than when I began, but I still find myself questioning the most basic of things-- like capitalization of certain proper nouns, like the Headwaters, or Missouri River. I wonder if I'll be wondering about this stuff for the rest of my life... 

Otherwise things are moving along, as we come closer and closer to our production deadline. I had another small article (a sidebar, actually) added to my piece, and got some positive feedback from the editors! Though tomorrow is another day... 

O/B: Week Four

It's been about a month now since I began with Outside Bozeman, and we just keep on keeping on.

This Monday was my first production deadline with the editors-- which means all my articles had to be ready to hit the press: researched and written, fact-checked, and copy-edited. For the most part, I feel like the seven pieces I was in charge of have come out well, though I do feel like they don't do much. I can't wait for a chance to write what needs to be written, but this whole experience is about paying my dues so I can learn how to climb to the top.

That being said, I learned some valuable lessons via the process of writing these pieces. First, I held an interview with the Montana Raptor Conservation Center, a local non-profit, and was surprised how very different it went than I had been anticipating. In my mind and my experiences, interviews always consisted of a relatively formal process where questions are laid out (though certainly flexible, as good interviewers should move where the speaker takes them) and there is a certain level of expectation from both parties on the Q/A format. But when I walked in to the Center and met Jason and Becky-- the only two paid employees at the Center-- I quickly realized I needed to ditch my spiral notebook and just listen. Thank god I had picked up a recorder the evening before because being able to go back and transcribe the conversation was the single most helpful tool for the completion of the piece.

Becky took me from cage to cage and introduced me to each of the recovering birds. It was easy to see the clear respect and awe she had for the wildness of the raptors, and from the way she spoke about them I sensed how rewarding being able to release these birds again must be for her. I met owls of all sizes and vultures, golden and bald eagles, red-tailed hawks, and several smaller raptors that I only know by the names Nekka and Watson, the friendly buggers-- Nekka liked to roost on my head as Becky showed me around.

I could talk about the experience there for longer than I care to here, but I found it really interesting that what I had thought I would walk away with in terms of content was so far from what I found most interesting. I was so captivated by the raptors and what these two incredible individuals are doing that I wanted to focus on giving them something in turn for what the birds gave me while I was around them. I wrote the piece much more heavily geared toward advocacy, making clear that the Center is a 501c3 and that they offer some really unique opportunities to the community in terms of their education courses. None of my work has been reviewed yet by the editors, so I don't know if I hit the nail on the head or nailed myself in the head quite yet... but I have faith in the quality of my work-- which counts for something, right?

I find that the office dynamic is rather engaging at Outside Bozeman. There are several other interns, two other editorial who I see and work with frequently. For the most part we are separate in terms of our work, but there are smaller mutual projects that we collaborate on. I find that I seem to be the most serious of the three of us, which has proven beneficial since I also seem to have the most responsibility. It's nice to have partners to ask the stupid questions, or who understand when you just need to sigh and say "fuck" every three minutes because you have so much to do that you can't keep straight in your head what to work on next. There's also an aire of competition between us, which seems to help keep me motivated and gives me a place to compare others' work and my own-- don't think this happens nearly enough in a classroom setting.

Again, I am staying hopeful and positive. There is another copy-edit deadline rolling in on Friday, meaning the rest of this week will be ten hour days working non-stop on the 60 submitted pieces for the spring issue. Vamos!

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.