In speaking with the President of Scholastic book fairs, Alan Boyko, he suggested that in order to get my name out there and increase my viability in this market, I should start a blog. But not just any blog, this blog needed a purpose, it needed to be something personal, a recording of trials suffered and a journey to the top of the mountain. Well, maybe not the top, maybe just a journey to the mountain base. Every journey… single step… blah, blah, blah. Point is it needed to be about me doing something; specifically trying to find a job in the publishing industry.
What is baffling, is that just hearing about my credentials you would think I’d be swept up faster than you could imagine, but that’s just not so. I have sent out resume after resume, I hear all the same advice, I try to follow all the same advice, and here it comes, 4 weeks from graduation from my MBA and I haven’t heard from ONE person. Sigh.
I’ve been telling stories since I can remember, and in eighth grade I wrote one of them down. It was my first book. It was horrible. I wrote it all on loose leaf paper and in trying to transcribe it, my secret island princesses suddenly became aliens from outer space. I have no idea what happened, and I’m sure other writers will tell you; sometimes the characters take you places you weren’t intending.
So, I’ve been writing since I was 13, books mostly, series fantasy. I went to college for art though. I was trying to “follow my passion”. Yeah ok. In reality I didn’t know what I wanted to do, I knew I enjoyed art and I had to pick a major so I took the easy road. I don’t regret it for a second though. I learned more about art than I ever wanted to know. More than that, I learned how to communicate to an audience in a completely different medium, without words. It’s also where one learns to take criticism. Of course, one must be constructive in such things, but I’m sure there were a few times when my professor wanted to say to me, what were you thinking?
Anyway, I figured, since my major was art, my minor needed to be something I could fall back on. I tried computer science, art history, graphic art, and finally creative writing; in that order. As you see, I tend to lean on the creative side and all my interests ended up going that way. At one point I considered getting a business minor in Italy one summer, but the program was cancelled. In the end that made me start thinking about my next step in education, but I’ll get back to that. So… I chose creative writing as my minor. It wasn’t intentional; it happened because I took a creative writing for non majors’ class. The other students in that class were … let’s just say not writers, the professor was excellent and she encouraged me to continue.
Unfortunately for me, I had to be officially in the program to take any more classes. So I signed up and suddenly I had two concentrations where the answer to the question “what are you going to do with that?” was a shrug and a mental scream.
By my last year, I was taking more creative writing classes than I was art, and I realized belatedly that I should have switched them in order of preference. Through my minor, I began to see the amount of work a writer truly needs to put into something like a book and it struck me that of all the things I’ve ever done, writing was the one thing I didn’t get tired of. Of course there were things I got tired of writing about, but actually writing, not so much.
But I was still left with nothing to fall back on career wise. That shrug and mental scream was starting to worry me because graduation came and went and I was doing nothing with my degree. My brother, awesomeness that he is, helped me get a job as an intern, writing technical documentation. VASTLY DIFFERENT TRADE, but incredibly valuable; If you ever want to learn how to talk to stupid people, write a “how to” guide.
Turn on the power button which is located on the top of the cell phone, signified by the upside down Q on the left hand side of the-
…
If you don’t know how to turn it on, it’s too complicated for you. Next page.
While on intern status I set my sights to Rollins College. The Crummer Graduate School of Business program is the “most prestigious” in FL. There’s no doubt of that. Researching other schools, there is simply none that would have been able to grant me the level of education I was looking for. It was well rounded, I didn’t need pre-requisites, and I didn’t even need to know anything about business. It was harder that way, but that’s probably why it took them so long to let me in. I spent 13 months trying to get into the EAMBA program. I took the GMAT twice ($300 each) and a GMAT prep course taught by the school. With all that, I managed a GMAT score below what they were asking from all other students. Don’t let anyone tell you persistence doesn’t count.
Of course once I was in I was required to do the work. More times than I care to mention I asked myself what I was doing there. I told myself I didn’t belong. I never questioned my abilities in terms of capabilities. I am capable of doing anything I set my mind to. Life has proven this again and again. But the work required a different way of thinking. Gone was the creative, what set in was panic. I was trying to catch up to my peers, and I was doing it alone because my first team saw me as someone who didn’t like to work. No matter how many times I told them I didn’t understand, they refused to believe or help and in the end, we parted very gladly. Regardless, I made it through the hardest part.
And now, I’m almost done.
During the summer, when I was catching my breath, I met a friend of my parents, Nina Wright. She’s a murder mystery writer and has a few books published. Because of her I joined the Society of Children Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI). Through this organization I have met other writers in the central FL area, started a critique group, and gone to a very expensive national conference. I have also taken the opportunity to work on my leadership skills through a critique group, which I started. It’s small, but the people in it are great. Everyone is very supportive and even though we don’t meet very often it satisfies my creative need and has the added bonus of getting me writing again. Not that I’m anywhere near finished with the first of my five book fantasy series.
Back at school, my MBA classes reaffirmed the lessons about what a writer needs to go through when writing. And more than ever the process from start to finish is fascinating to me. Through editing papers for my teams, from 40 pages of marketing research reports to two page case summaries, I find that I enjoy school. Not enough to stay in it for the rest of my life, but enough to know that I have grown from where I was.
But now, at the end, I'm ready to bring that knowledge, passion, and drive to the publishing world. I want to be a part of the authors dream. I want to see those books made. I want to see my own book made. So here it is I guess. My blog. Describing that journey. Worming my way into the Trade.
Get it? Book Worm/ Trade Publishing. Don’t judge me.
What is baffling, is that just hearing about my credentials you would think I’d be swept up faster than you could imagine, but that’s just not so. I have sent out resume after resume, I hear all the same advice, I try to follow all the same advice, and here it comes, 4 weeks from graduation from my MBA and I haven’t heard from ONE person. Sigh.
I’ve been telling stories since I can remember, and in eighth grade I wrote one of them down. It was my first book. It was horrible. I wrote it all on loose leaf paper and in trying to transcribe it, my secret island princesses suddenly became aliens from outer space. I have no idea what happened, and I’m sure other writers will tell you; sometimes the characters take you places you weren’t intending.
So, I’ve been writing since I was 13, books mostly, series fantasy. I went to college for art though. I was trying to “follow my passion”. Yeah ok. In reality I didn’t know what I wanted to do, I knew I enjoyed art and I had to pick a major so I took the easy road. I don’t regret it for a second though. I learned more about art than I ever wanted to know. More than that, I learned how to communicate to an audience in a completely different medium, without words. It’s also where one learns to take criticism. Of course, one must be constructive in such things, but I’m sure there were a few times when my professor wanted to say to me, what were you thinking?
Anyway, I figured, since my major was art, my minor needed to be something I could fall back on. I tried computer science, art history, graphic art, and finally creative writing; in that order. As you see, I tend to lean on the creative side and all my interests ended up going that way. At one point I considered getting a business minor in Italy one summer, but the program was cancelled. In the end that made me start thinking about my next step in education, but I’ll get back to that. So… I chose creative writing as my minor. It wasn’t intentional; it happened because I took a creative writing for non majors’ class. The other students in that class were … let’s just say not writers, the professor was excellent and she encouraged me to continue.
Unfortunately for me, I had to be officially in the program to take any more classes. So I signed up and suddenly I had two concentrations where the answer to the question “what are you going to do with that?” was a shrug and a mental scream.
By my last year, I was taking more creative writing classes than I was art, and I realized belatedly that I should have switched them in order of preference. Through my minor, I began to see the amount of work a writer truly needs to put into something like a book and it struck me that of all the things I’ve ever done, writing was the one thing I didn’t get tired of. Of course there were things I got tired of writing about, but actually writing, not so much.
But I was still left with nothing to fall back on career wise. That shrug and mental scream was starting to worry me because graduation came and went and I was doing nothing with my degree. My brother, awesomeness that he is, helped me get a job as an intern, writing technical documentation. VASTLY DIFFERENT TRADE, but incredibly valuable; If you ever want to learn how to talk to stupid people, write a “how to” guide.
Turn on the power button which is located on the top of the cell phone, signified by the upside down Q on the left hand side of the-
…
If you don’t know how to turn it on, it’s too complicated for you. Next page.
While on intern status I set my sights to Rollins College. The Crummer Graduate School of Business program is the “most prestigious” in FL. There’s no doubt of that. Researching other schools, there is simply none that would have been able to grant me the level of education I was looking for. It was well rounded, I didn’t need pre-requisites, and I didn’t even need to know anything about business. It was harder that way, but that’s probably why it took them so long to let me in. I spent 13 months trying to get into the EAMBA program. I took the GMAT twice ($300 each) and a GMAT prep course taught by the school. With all that, I managed a GMAT score below what they were asking from all other students. Don’t let anyone tell you persistence doesn’t count.
Of course once I was in I was required to do the work. More times than I care to mention I asked myself what I was doing there. I told myself I didn’t belong. I never questioned my abilities in terms of capabilities. I am capable of doing anything I set my mind to. Life has proven this again and again. But the work required a different way of thinking. Gone was the creative, what set in was panic. I was trying to catch up to my peers, and I was doing it alone because my first team saw me as someone who didn’t like to work. No matter how many times I told them I didn’t understand, they refused to believe or help and in the end, we parted very gladly. Regardless, I made it through the hardest part.
And now, I’m almost done.
During the summer, when I was catching my breath, I met a friend of my parents, Nina Wright. She’s a murder mystery writer and has a few books published. Because of her I joined the Society of Children Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI). Through this organization I have met other writers in the central FL area, started a critique group, and gone to a very expensive national conference. I have also taken the opportunity to work on my leadership skills through a critique group, which I started. It’s small, but the people in it are great. Everyone is very supportive and even though we don’t meet very often it satisfies my creative need and has the added bonus of getting me writing again. Not that I’m anywhere near finished with the first of my five book fantasy series.
Back at school, my MBA classes reaffirmed the lessons about what a writer needs to go through when writing. And more than ever the process from start to finish is fascinating to me. Through editing papers for my teams, from 40 pages of marketing research reports to two page case summaries, I find that I enjoy school. Not enough to stay in it for the rest of my life, but enough to know that I have grown from where I was.
But now, at the end, I'm ready to bring that knowledge, passion, and drive to the publishing world. I want to be a part of the authors dream. I want to see those books made. I want to see my own book made. So here it is I guess. My blog. Describing that journey. Worming my way into the Trade.
Get it? Book Worm/ Trade Publishing. Don’t judge me.
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