the internship series

In case you missed anything, here are the seven consecutive posts detailing my internship last year:

A Year Ago or, the Internship: Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
part seven or, the end

the internship, part seven or, the end

During my last month at the internship, a former classmate e-mailed me an essay he’d been working on. “Take a look at this,” he’d written. “Let me know what you think.” We’d become friends in a nonfiction writing class, one of the first graduate classes I’d taken. In that workshop, my classmates and I had written travel essays, exchanged them, and discussed them together. I’d since taken other workshop classes and even participated in a similar-style writer’s group, so I was familiar with evaluating others’ work. A funny thing happened when I read my friend’s piece, however: out of practice, I wasn’t noticing content as much as grammar.

When I’d read the newspaper, I’d involuntarily compare AP and Chicago Manual styles. Pronoun reference questions lingered in my mind after I’d edited a book where the author always used “their” to refer to each person.

My friend’s essay was about identity, using a physical object—his beard—for symbolism. But try as I might to focus on meaning and setting and other content-driven issues, my eyes kept catching on comma splices or pronoun-reference mistakes, things that I wouldn’t necessarily view as imperative to being a good writer. Feeling those modifications wouldn’t be especially helpful for him at that stage in the writing process, I shot him a quick “good job” email and didn’t criticize anything—not especially helpful, I’m sure. But that’s how life is, I think: the way you spend your days has to affect you. In my case, for five hundred hours, editing was my job; and I am different. I read differently, I write differently, I enjoy the process differently.

the internship, part six

Probably the hardest part about the editing internship, for me, was watching myself make mistakes. Errors from the first few weeks didn’t bother me that much; errors from the last few weeks did. The week of Thanksgiving, with just over three weeks left in my assignment, the legal department asked me to do a printer proof check on a book. Printer proof checks usually required an hour or less of time; mainly, I would compare the company hard copy against the printer’s proof. I followed a checklist: made sure running heads match chapter titles, double checked that TOC page numbers matched text, etc. And Brenda and Linda had clearly explained that with printer proofs, the goal was to find few mistakes because the company would pay per change.

While I was comparing the table of contents with the proof page numbers, I noticed the headings had lowercased words like “above,” “if,” and sometimes “which.” Since those words should technically be capitalized in titles (CMS 8.167), I marked and flagged the pages. Sometime after flagging the tenth mistake, I wondered if capitalization wasn’t a big deal when checking a printer proof. I should’ve emailed Brenda to check, but I didn’t.

I finished the project, left it on the appropriate designer’s desk, and went to lunch. When I returned, I found an email from Brenda waiting for me: “Let me know when you get back. I need to talk to you about some of the changes you made on the printer proof.”

That didn’t sound good. I responded, and in minutes she was at my desk, printer proof in hand. “Oooh Kayy,” she exclaimed, dropping the manuscript in front of me. “I think we need to go over the whole concept of the printer proof again.”

Brenda reminded me that checking a printer proof means marking only glaring errors—misspellings, incorrect chapter titles, that kind of thing. Capitalization mistakes, bad hyphenation—those are things that would’ve been great to catch at the proofreading stage, but they aren’t worth the cost to correct now.

I felt like a complete idiot. Months into the internship, I was making major mistakes—major enough to fluster Brenda and warrant a rebuke. My ego wounded, I apologized and inwardly vowed to be more careful.

the internship, part five

As an intern, I was usually treated just as any other employee: I had my own cubicle, I followed the same hours and holidays, I received every company-wide e-mail announcement, and, in December, the company even invited us interns to the formal Christmas party. On the Friday of my fifth week at the company, it held its quarterly new-hire orientation meeting. Anyone who had been hired since the last meeting, including interns, would attend, and the session would last from 9 a.m.–2 p.m., with lunch provided. A dozen of us were new employees: all females, ironically; and the gathering felt a little more like a college dorm room than a corporate meeting. Over half of the other employees were young like me, several having attended a publishing institute, where the president and publisher of our company had spoken recently.
We met in the company’s conference room and listened to presentations by each department. The divisions followed one another in rapid succession: an overview by the vice president; a presentation from the acquisitions editors; meetings with bookmaking, publicity, marketing, sales, accounting, IT, and customer service. Finally our boxed lunches—bagels and chips from a local restaurant—came, and while we ate, the president and publisher M came in for the last and longest presentation.

M, who had been notably absent from my first-day introductions, defied any stereotypes I’d held about company presidents. She wore sneakers and jeans; her hair was wild and unruly; and her voice, a nasally sound tinged with a New York accent. She looked nothing like a corporate professional, let alone a company founder. Nonetheless, she was confident when she spoke about the company she’d begun, a company started with a few thousand dollars out of her personal bedroom. Using PowerPoint, M detailed to us the founding and growth of her company. She had originally worked in the finance world and had no formal training in publishing. That finance background came in handy though; M became founder, owner, and president of a thriving publishing house. She’d won awards, been in who’s whos, and become something of a publishing celebrity. Listening to her, I saw that M was the kind of person who continuously interrupted her stories with cues for feedback. “Do you know what I’m saying?” she asked someone in response to a nodding head.

She closed with a Q&A session. “Did you ever envision, when starting this company years ago, that it would grow to this size? Did you dream for that? And if so, do you have specific dreams for the future of the company now?” I asked, when M looked my direction.

“No,” she began. “I didn’t envision any of this. I just saw a market for financial books—then other books—and just went with wherever I saw an opportunity. Now, though, I see the future of the company as being more structured.”

For most of the attendees, the meeting, I’m sure, was exciting and inspiring. M waxed eloquent about poetry being her lifeblood, the thing that motivates her. She spoke of high ideals and a desire to change the literary world. For me though, perhaps because I was just an intern, perhaps because I was new to the world of publishing, I felt a little removed from the discussion. I’ve loved reading since I was a child, but the crunching numbers, the comparative analysis, the self-praise—seemed a far cry from the imaginative world of storybooks.

Editing lesson #3: publishing, and thus by extension editing, is a business. As with any business, the goal is to make money, to make a name for yourself, to be successful. Though most people, I believe, get into publishing because of an interest in literature—of some kind, in some way—the focus inevitably becomes the bottom line. This is not necessarily a bad thing, not necessarily a selling out; it is, however, a reality.

the internship, part four

Every other Tuesday, and anytime the department couldn’t find work for me to do, I helped the editors in the legal department. Though its editing team, made up of three people, ran similarly to mine, this team had its own manual and set of rules. The first few times I worked there, I took my things, and I physically moved to a desk in the department. Every new project brought up new questions, and I wanted to be close to the people who could answer them.

My desk sat between Brenda and Linda, both of whom were in their late twenties. There, I was not surrounded by high cubicle walls but by low, unassuming ones. Brenda suggested I bring headphones so I could listen to music while working; most editors did this. But the real fringe benefit of working here was the window. To my right, a huge wall window provided a view of the neighboring building and the cars that drove by. Especially in September and October, I loved getting to see the wind rustling leaves or the rain washing the ground.

At some point in the first few weeks, I was working on a two-week read. Every time legal published a book, the hard copy would be proofread one more time, during the first two weeks following printing. The goal was to find glaring mistakes, not controversial ones. So I worked through a child support book, trying to be alert to capitalization errors or missed punctuation. One issue that kept coming up was hyphens—or rather, the lack of hyphens.

I came to the company with strong opinions on hyphenation, opinions that had been formed in editing class discussions: when two modifying words preceded a noun, and those modifiers were not qualifiers, not –ly words, and not clearly open compounds, they were hyphenated. Examples would be words like “coffee-press sale” or “white-tent meeting.” Skimming through the two-week read, though, I found repeated examples where the modifiers were not hyphenated, but left open.

First I marked these words, assuming they had been somehow overlooked. Then I just put post-its on them, planning to ask Brenda or Linda later. Finally I reached a point of self-doubting and confusion: had I totally misunderstood hyphens? There was no way all these words could be mistakes, not in an already-published book. So I went to Linda.

“It’s hard to explain,” she told me. “We follow Chicago Manual of Style on this: we hyphenate when it would cause confusion not to.”

Her answer didn’t satisfy me as I mentally noted CMS 7.90 and its elaborate list of when and when not to hyphenate. “Let’s ask Brenda,” she said.

We walked the five or so steps to Brenda’s desk, and she had little explanation to offer either. “We always leave ‘child care’ open,” she said. “And we never hyphenate this.” Then she paused. “But honestly, this is just the kind of thing we have arguments over. Someone will want to hyphenate a participle and an adjective that come before a noun.”

I opened up my CMS and pointed to a rule. “It says here that you’re supposed to.”

Brenda and Lisa didn’t respond; they just looked at my book.

“Unless you just have some kind of house style that trumps this?” I suggested.

“Right,” Brenda agreed. “Why am I even looking at CMS? Our style is slowly evolving, and a lot of it is just what Linda and I know in our heads. But that style trumps CMS. Exactly.”

“OK. So should I remove all these edits I made?”

“No, go ahead and flag them on top, like questions. We’ll take a look at them. When you’re not sure, just flag it on top.”

And so, in one thirty-minute discussion, I learned editing lesson #2: copyediting is, largely, subjective. Here, I followed one set of guidelines/style; in the other editorial department, a slightly different one. Despite a general submission to The Chicago Manual of Style, each department and department member had different preferences and quirks. In later weeks, I learned a managing editor liked to add an apostrophe in decade references (ex. 1990’s), despite the CMS rule against it; the assistant editors strongly disagreed, but managers trump assistants, so it stayed.

What I had once found so enjoyable about editing—the ability to know rules and implement them—was slowly unwinding before me. In my free time, when I would see a mistake in published material at this point, I would wonder if the company’s house style allowed the deviation from traditional rules. I felt far less sure of my knowledge than I had before taking the internship.

the internship, part three

In my college editing class, my classmates and I had gotten to discuss each editorial decision we made. When we took a quiz, we would go through the answers together, pausing to deal with questions or confusion. The feedback there was phenomenal; if I consistently added an unnecessary comma after a conjunction (as in “So, I went with him.”), that habit would surface in class. I’d be able to not only see that it was wrong, but why it was wrong; and I’d be able to correct it.

In a publishing house, however, much of the day-to-day editing takes place without comment. When I proofread a marketing book during my second week of work, for example, I did not know if my changes had been right or not. I spent two days on it, and I turned it in to one of the assistant editors, Amanda. Amanda’s cubicle was two away, sort of diagonal with mine. She was the youngest editor, and her desk was covered with personal items like pictures of her daughter and Napoleon Dynamite notepaper. I’d marked questions on post-it notes, flagging pages where I’d had confusion. She took the manuscript and thanked me, but I never heard if I’d done what she wanted. Because I was just one in a series of editing stages the book would undergo, my changes didn’t matter enough to warrant a response or feedback.

Another editor, Bequita, a thirty-something brunette originally from Michigan who headed up the gift books editing, had a completely different approach to feedback. One of the first assignments she gave me presented the challenge of overcapitalization; every time the author used a specific term for something, she capitalized it. I found myself making lists of words I wasn’t sure about capitalizing: “Big Girl: see pages 22, 24, 35, 37, 41, 42, etc.” Some words, though, I felt sure about lowercasing, like “your story.” What possible reason could justify capping that?

The book was short, so I finished it in about two days and returned it to Bequita. “I know it seems like I had a lot of questions on this,” I told her as I approached her desk, covered with papers and projects. Laughing, I admitted, “And I guess I did. A lot of capitalization issues came up.”

Bequita took the copy from me, pausing from sipping her Starbucks drink to flip through some of my notes. Smiling, she said, “OK. That’s fine. I haven’t looked through this yet really…” She stopped her eyes mid-page. “Oh now this I would’ve left.” She didn’t explain what it was that she would’ve left, but I figured she was probably right about it.

A week later, in a department meeting, she handed me a piece of paper labeled as Bequita’s Cheat Sheet. “I think a lot of the mistakes you’re making are things I used to miss,” she said. Mistakes? “I made you a copy of this list that I keep posted so I can refer to it.” I took the list and thanked her. The sheet specified which titles should be italicized, which put in quotation marks; which numbers should be in number form and which written out. I appreciated her help but didn’t understand how I could’ve made mistakes with those things. I knew movies and books were italicized, didn’t I? I knew not to spell out non-round numbers over one hundred, didn’t I? As four of us, the bulk of the editorial department, sat around a table in the media room, snacking on Munchkins, Bequita continued. “I could let you look at my edits when I finish with it.”

“Yeah, that sounds good,” I agreed. Maybe seeing what I missed would help me.

Sure enough, when she handed me the manuscript a few days later, I saw she was right. A lot of her changes were preference issues, but enough of them were valid to make me think. I had missed italicizing some movie titles; I’d overlooked some numbers, etc. Looking back, I see that day as providing editing lesson #1: take your time, and be overcareful. When you read quickly, you will make more mistakes.

the internship, part two

The three assistant editors went out for lunch with me and the other editorial intern, Jennifer, during the second week of my internship. My boss, Leah, drove us to a local wrap place. We all sat on barstools, eating our wraps, talking about our lives and editing. In the car, twenty-three-year-old Amanda mentioned that, before coming to the company a year earlier, she had read a book a week. “Me too!” I exclaimed, wondering if my reading enjoyment would lessen as I read more at work.

It’s funny: I remember telling a friend of mine once that if I could find a job where I would read books all day, I would be perfectly happy. When I’d made the comment, editing hadn’t occurred to me as a job possibility. But at this internship, my primary job task centered on exactly what I’d wished for: reading. What I loved most my job was the variety of materials I got to read: one day I would be reading about religion; the next, raising children. I read relationship books, self-help legal guides, comics, fiction. Each day I learned about new subjects and consumed more information.  The downside, of course, was that I gradually didn’t care much for other reading, and my reading-for-pleasure waned during the time I spent at the company.

Bequita, who had received her undergraduate degree from a prestigious university in the Midwest, asked me about graduate school as she moved her bowl of cinnamon pita chips between us. “Do you like it?” she wondered.

“Yeah, I do. My classes are centered on things I’m actually interested in … and for me, who didn’t major in journalism in undergrad, it’s really important to get this training.”

“Hmm,” she answered, unconvinced. “I’m still upset about how little my degree has done for me. And then there’s student loans!”

I nodded. She had voiced an unspoken concern of my own: sometimes I wondered if graduate school would help me find the job I’d wanted when I’d enrolled. I hoped that the results of my education would justify my investment in it. But sitting there at Fresh City, the only one of five women who had pursued a master’s degree, I realized I was the educational superior, but the least vocationally advanced. Education’s great, but I was working for people with less formal training than mine; it seems in this profession, experience is everything.

a year ago or, the internship: part one

It hit me recently that a year ago, I was a lowly editorial intern, making minimum wage at a book publisher. My boss was a year older than I, the head assistant editor who seemed so far ahead of me. I pulled out my journal today, which brought back all the memories. In the interest of nostalgia and because it relates to writing/jobs, I’m going to be posting my internship story over the next few days. If you’re at that breaking-into-writing/editing stage, I’d love to talk to you–if only for the empathy.

Here’s part one:

I sat in the animal-print chair, holding my canvas Barnes & Noble bag on my shoulder, clutching my umbrella, still wearing my jacket. It was my first day at a local book publisher that had agreed to take me on as an editorial intern. I thumped my black leather heel on the ground, partially out of nervousness, partially to shake the raindrops, and picked up a company catalog with my free hand, scanning to see if I recognized any titles.

“I don’t think she’s in yet,” Annie, the receptionist, said about my new manager Leah Robin, when I’d approached the front desk. “I’ll keep trying her phone.”

A year into my grad program, my favorite class was unquestionably Editing. I had taken it on an every-other-Saturday basis, earlier in the year. I remember that when I signed up for the class, friends were surprised. “Seven hours on a Saturday? Editing?” But my professor was animated, the discussions were fascinating, and the hours flew by. Our class spent entire afternoons discussing punctuation and grammar, and it was fun. My professor let us argue about sentences: “Should this be an en dash or a hyphen? Is ‘Renzo piano’ definitely an open compound?”

Rapidly, grammar and editing occupied even my free-time thoughts; I became one of those annoying people who find errors in the day’s newspaper or a favorite magazine. And that March, I got a freelance editing opportunity as a result of my new habit. I had contacted a local publisher about her magazine’s errors, and she’d hired me to correct them. For the magazine, I received sixty-some pages of proof to read and edit from my home in one day; then I returned them to the magazine’s office.

Fast forward a few months: summer was beginning, and I wasn’t planning to take any classes. Tossing around ideas for summer work, I wondered about an internship—but what kind? A teacher of mine suggested several companies; only one was located in the area: a small, independent book publisher just thirty minutes from my house. I researched them online and found they had an editing internship that would allow me to learn more about the publishing industry and also to refine my editing knowledge. I applied right away, but its summer positions were full. I applied again in August, and it took me.

“I guess she was here all along,” Annie peeked over her desk at me. “She’ll be right out. Do you want to put your lunch in the fridge?” I shook my head, not bothering to explain the bag I carried held my copies of The Chicago Manual of Style and Merriam-Webster Dictionary, not my afternoon meal.

In moments, Leah greeted me, clad in a comfortable shirt and blue jeans, and led me to my cubicle. “I tried to get you everything I thought you’d need,” she said, pointing to flags, post-its, pens, tissues, and a company copy of CMS. She’d even posted a “Welcome” sign on the cube’s wall. When I’d first met Leah, at my interview, I’d been surprised at how young she looked with her long blonde hair and trendy glasses frames. At the interview, too, she’d worn blue jeans; this company was definitely different than any I’d worked for before.

I set my things on the desk and followed Leah as she led me through the building. She introduced me to people in almost every department (IT, design, acquisitions, sales, human resources, printing) giving their names, though I knew I wouldn’t remember them. The company’s offices filled about half of a small, one-floor building and housed around sixty employees. Most departments held several cubicles, and only some department heads and executives had private offices. The central space, known as the “bullpen,” housed a sort of meeting place for the staff, where parties were held and announcements were given. The bullpen was also where the company’s cow, formerly one of Chicago’s many, resided. I later learned they’d actually beat out Oprah on the bidding for the literary bull. The bullpen, like the rest of the building, had a bright and cheerful feel—all red, orange, and yellow color choices. And nestled next to the cow and drums (what they used to call meetings—really!), a large fountain flowed serenely.

After touring the building, Leah and I returned to the editorial department and met in the media room. We spent the morning going page by page through the blue-binder editorial intern manual, which involved a review of key areas of The Chicago Manual of Style, as well as information about house rules that involved deviations from CMS or Merriam-Webster. For example, the company prefers “email” to “e-mail” and “U.S.” to “US.” Leah also gave me a typed sheet of comments previous interns had made at the end of their assignments. Several stood out to me immediately: “Eight hours of editing is tough!” “Really tedious work!” and “You are not a slow editor. Really. Take your time.”

The amount of information I was given in one day intimidated me at first: How would I remember the order of final checks? What were all the ARC tags again? Could I bring this binder with me everywhere? But Leah assured me that she didn’t expect me to know everything that day; I had time to learn and absorb the procedures. One day down; sixty-one to go.