Alright...this still makes me nervous, sending my words out into the world. But I know some people really wanted to read what I wrote for my personal statement on my application for grad school. So, I am sharing it now:
Pipe Dreams
According to Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, a pipe
dream is “a hope, wish, or dream that is impossible to achieve or not
practical.” Over the course of my life,
one could often hear me sigh, and say, “I wish there was a job where I could
get paid to read books all day,” and then immediately follow that statement
with, “I know, I know. It’s just a pipe
dream.”
One of the biggest reasons I want to be a part of the
publishing industry are these three simple words: books change lives. And I can personally attest to that.
When I was four years old, Dr. Seuss and my grandfather
changed my life. Dr. Seuss’s ABC and a number of other Dr. Seuss books were the very
works that my grandpa used to teach me to read.
Not only were those stories something I could understand at the age of
four, but they taught me some profound lessons: how to use my imagination, that
it’s important to be kind, that we need to take care of the earth, and many
others.
I was six years old when my first grade teacher handed me a
little yellow book that said The Boxcar
Children on the front. She knew I
had been particularly bored with the little ten-page paper books we had been
reading in class, and she told me it might be a little hard for me to read, but
that it was a good story, and it was worth working hard to get through it. And I did.
Jessie, Benny, Henry, and Violet taught me that not every child’s life
was as easy as mine had been, and that we should be compassionate toward
others, because you never know what they’ve been through.
I was in the fourth grade when my teacher introduced me to
Shel Silverstein. The Giving Tree taught me about not only the capacity to love (and
give), but also to appreciate sad/happy endings. Where
the Sidewalk Ends taught me that poetry
isn’t just boring, old, dead people’s words.
Poetry can be funny, sad, make you smile, and change your perspective of
the world.
When I was in high school, it was J. K. Rowling’s turn to
teach me something. She gave us a story
about a boy who, with the help of his friends, saved the world. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t an adult
yet. Because of Rowling, I learned the
magic of buying a book at midnight on its release date, and staying up for the
next 24 hours to finish reading it. And
Harry Potter taught us all that no matter how young or old you are, it’s okay
to believe in magic.
I had been married for two years when I finally decided what
I was going to get my bachelor’s degree in: English literature. Almost everyone (including my then-husband)
thought this was one of the most impractical decisions I had ever made. But I knew I loved literature, and that
studying it was exactly what I wanted to do for the next two years. During this time I studied everything from
early British literature to Native American poetry, children’s books to books
about child abuse. My final semester of
college, I took an independent reading class.
With the help of my professor, I decided to study female contemporaries
of Jane Austen. It was these authors,
and their books, that gave me the courage to leave an abusive marriage. If Jane Austen, Jane Barker, Frances Burney,
and Maria Edgeworth could write and publish novels during a time of such
adversity for female authors, and their characters could overcome the many
obstacles in their lives, then I most certainly could stand up for myself and
leave an unhealthy relationship. At the
ripe age of 25, when I was finally the
holder of a bachelor’s degree, recently divorced, jobless after moving halfway
across the country, and back to living with my parents, my view of life
changed. I started to see life as an
entire game of poker, rather than a single hand I had been dealt. I could discard the bad cards in my hand, and
exchange for new ones. And if I lost
this hand, there was a new deal coming. I could do something about my situation,
and I jumped on it.
In the summer of 2013, I decided to start a book blog. Little did I know how much my world was about
to be rocked because of that one small decision.
Since I didn’t really know what I was doing, I started
trolling other book blogs. It was one of
these blogs (A Reading Nurse) that convinced me to read my first indie
published book. Illicit Love by Jane Lark opened my eyes to the world of indie
authors I had previously not experienced.
(It has since been acquired by Harper Impulse, and retitled The Illicit Love of a Courtesan.) This book was a life changer for me. Even though I could logically justify why I
had left an abusive marriage, my mind was still a little twisted up about
it…maybe I could have fixed things, or changed him somehow so we could have
stayed together. But after reading this
book, and seeing an abusive situation from the outside looking in, I realized
it is NEVER healthy to stay in an abusive relationship, and that we don’t have
the power to change other people.
And then I discovered the true power of books to bring people
together. Not only have I formed
friendships with a few authors after reading their books, but some of my best
friends in (and all over) the world I met because we fell in love with the same
books. I connected personally with
authors such as Cassie Mae, Renea Mason, Faith Sullivan, Jay McLean, and
Collette West. Not only can I honestly
say that these women have become my friends, and changed my perspective on
certain genres, but all of them have given me opportunities to hone my editing
and proofreading skills by working on books with them. But perhaps the most life-altering experience
I have had with an author was working as Rachel Harris’s intern assistant for a
year.
Rachel put out feelers into her street team for people who
might be interested in being an author’s assistant the same summer I started my
book blog. Of course, she wasn't just
focused on herself during this process...she wanted to find someone who either
wanted to become an author, or who wanted to get into the publishing industry,
that she would be able to mentor along the way.
Not only did the job sound intriguing, but it seemed like an amazing
opportunity to get an inside look at publishing, so I asked to be sent an
application. She asked some tough
questions on the application, like: “What aspect of the publishing industry are
you most interested in for yourself?” At
that point, I was just so excited about the possibility to do anything in the
industry that it was tough to answer. I
was enjoying promoting great books (and their authors), so marketing or
promotions didn’t seem like a bad place to start. But I did mention that ‘someday’ I would love
to be an editor. After reading my
application, and conducting an interview online, Rachel took a chance on me,
and it changed my life.
While working for Rachel, I was able to work on two novels
from start to finish with her: My Not So
Super Sweet Life and Accidentally
Married on Purpose. I also worked on
various stages of a few other books with her, but these two books allowed me to
see the entire process from both the writing and publishing sides. I helped with research and outlining before
Rachel began writing. I read as a
critique partner multiple days a week while she was writing, looking for
character issues, plot holes, spelling and grammar errors, etc. I was also included in emails with her
editor, so I was able to learn about the editing process from the ground
up. It was during this stage that Rachel
began encouraging me to seriously look into what it would take to pursue any
opportunity I could find to get into the publishing field. So I began to look at job openings at major
publishing houses in the United States.
Most of the available jobs that I was interested in required experience,
or education in lieu of it. So I began
looking at graduate degree programs in the United States. I looked into a few programs, but they were
all two year programs, and they all felt so ‘theoretical’ in nature, and not
very personal. One program I looked into
is even offered completely online. None
of them felt right for me.
Enter in another book that changed my life: 13 Little Blue Envelopes, by Maureen
Johnson. I had read it the first time
when I first started blogging, but remembering the feelings I had while reading
it, I decided to read it again. I have
been to Europe once. It was on a trip
with my humanities class between my junior and senior year of high school. We spent a week in Italy, a few days in
Paris, and a few days in London. As much
as I loved all of the artwork, the monuments, and the culture, I had firmly
decided that I would never be able to visit Europe again without it being on a
tour, because there was just no way I could figure out any of those things on
my own. But after re-reading this book,
I thought “If Ginny could go on a crazy scavenger hunt across Europe, then I
most certainly could live and study for my master’s degree over there.” And so I began my search for an MA program
overseas.
From the moment I found Kingston University in my online
search, I knew it was the program for me. I combed through every single word I could find about the program on the
website. I looked through who teaches
the courses, the companies who worked with the program, reading about what the
masterclasses were like, what other students had to say about the program, and the
work placement aspect of the program.
And then I pulled up the actual modules: Hands-on, real-life
projects. Grades based on a product
output and portfolios, not just paper tests and essays. When I discovered the practical publishing
project and content development and production modules, I saw exactly the kinds
of things I was looking for in a graduate program. I would get actual, practical experience in
the publishing world, even inside the classroom walls. I started following the Kingston Publishing
blog, and I get more and more excited every time I get an email with the latest
post about a masterclass, or something else going on in the publishing industry.
The world of books is ever-changing, and I can’t wait to be a
part of that change.
Sometimes I read to escape.
Sometimes I read to acquire new knowledge. Sometimes I read because I want to feel something. And other times I read to know that I’m not
alone. But the most important things
I’ve received from books were the unexpected lessons I learned from the lives
of the characters contained between their covers. Like giving me the courage and gumption to
reach for my dreams. Because those
wishes I have that seem like pipe dreams, really aren’t pipe dreams at all, as
long as I’m willing to put forth the effort to attain them. This
is why I want to work in publishing: to help shape and change the lives of
people around the world with books, the way that books have shaped and changed
mine.
