My Personal Statement

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.