A Beginning
I spend a lot of time starting and ending things. I just started college two and a half years ago, and two months from now I will be finished. I just moved into the city, but I’ll be moving out again as soon as my internship ends. I just started working at IVP four weeks ago; seven weeks from now my internship will be over and I will, yet again, be starting something new.
We’ve all been there before, right? None of these beginnings and endings has been or will be overwhelmingly easy. Starting and ending things generally aren’t. I won’t complain too much, though; I accept my life for how it is. I am looking forward, however, to a time post-college when my life hopefully has some routine again.
Starting a new job is especially difficult, so I hope the next job I start goes as smoothly as my transition to IVP. Everyone here is super welcoming (it’s not creepy at all that they all know my name, and I know about five of theirs). I have a really good supervisor and a well-networked coworker, Al, who, after I had been working for about two days, got a copy of my favorite book signed by my favorite author.
My impression of the publishing world so far—to borrow from the upstart theory of intelligent design—is that it’s irreducibly complex. A book, from the outside, looks pretty simple. It’s got a cover and some pages with words on them. From the inside, a book looks like countless read-throughs, several meetings, numerous emails and phone calls, and that’s all before it even gets to production and distribution. Needless to say, I have a lot keeping me busy at IVP and still have a lot to learn.
Do I like being part of the complex process that results in a book? Yes. Do I think I could continue doing this for a long time? I don’t know. That’s what these next few weeks and blog posts will be about. So, as I start this blog, that of course will end all too quickly, I’m just going to enjoy life for its transient nature and hopefully give some readers a glimpse of the publishing world through the eyes of an intern.
Posted by Michelle Read
at March 9, 2009 12:59 PM
Comments are closed for this entry.