Deleting Things From Your Resume at 19

I got bored sitting in class and asked for people to ask questions and whatnot. Someone asked how I got around to doing all that I do. That's a rather complicated question since I've done...a lot. So, blog post!

I was 14 when I was first asked to join a book blog. I didn't take it very seriously at first, only writing a couple of reviews between the February when I was invited and the fall. It's been five years as of this month.

In November of that year, I was avoiding working on my NaNoWriMo book. I only had a few thousand words left and it was the second to last day of the month. I stumbled across a book blog - maybe on twitter? Maybe some other way? This part is fuzzy to me, but I found one. And through that blog, I found another, and so on and so forth. I realized this was something I already did, but I wanted to take it seriously. I wanted to be a blog with a bigger following and I wanted to be friends with all these people, and I wanted to be entering contests and getting ARCs through them, and eventually, on my own.

I took a day to finish my NaNo, then on December 1, talked with Lanna about setting up the blog as a serious thing, like all these others I'd found.

Over the next year, I did a lot of blogging and a lot of tweeting and a lot of fangirl-emailing authors. It was about seven months before I got my first ARC, and they haven't really stopped coming in. I started connecting with authors over my love of their books. Then I began learning more about books before they came out, before the ARCs, as early as book deals, and sometimes even earlier. Then I could connect with authors even more.

These connections with authors lead to some contacting me for beta reading. I'm now a regular reader for one author, I've read for two authors, and I've been trusted to read manuscript versions of several books by those authors.

But I always wanted to do more. I wasn't very social, I had very few friends and lived in an area where there wasn't much to do even if I was. And I wanted to help out authors more. So one day, I offered up being an author assistant. For a little while, I was a sounding board for swag ideas and helped with research. 

A little while later, one author I'd connected with asked if I'd read her book. I read it and loved it, so she asked me to be her assistant in May 2012. I've been doing publicity types of things since then. 

I started college in New York City in August 2012. I began frequently attending events, which allowed me to meet other bloggers, editors, publicists, and authors. I attended New York Comic Con, which gave me even more room to meet people in an environment not really about books. I continued meeting people and sporadically blogging and in November, made the decision to be a freelance editor. My friend, Brent, was one and there were going to be a couple of openings there, so I happily agreed to join. I kept it quiet for over a month, and it was officially announced early in January 2013. 

That spring, I began applying to summer publishing internships. I only had one interview that didn't lead to anything, but as a freshman, it was still encouraging to have that interest.

In May, I went to Teen Author Carnival, but not just as an attendee. I finished moving into my first ever apartment, took a shower, then hustled down to the library to begin set up and prep. A quick dinner break, then we had to start looking after very early arrivals. I spent most of the night in the lobby, directing people to where they wanted to be.

The next day was BEA, my first conference. It was huge and massive and full of people I felt like I knew already. I had several best selling authors recognize me from my twitter picture or handle that I'd worn as a second badge. I'm still not quite over that high.

In August, I branched out from my original freelance editing company to start my own, True Blue Editorial, with another blogger, Tirzah. 

I attended NYCC again this past fall, as well as several other events before and after. I began applying to spring internships, just to start getting my resume out there again. I only sent out one before realizing that it wouldn't actually work with my schedule, and I forgot about it. I turned nineteen and spent my first birthday without my family. I continued seeing friends that came to the city and friends that had moved to the city. I continued blogging sporadically and editing and going to school. 

In December, I was asked to interview to the one company I applied for. It was an editorial internship at a couple of children's imprints. I interviewed in my last week of classes, returned to campus, and shuffled around my classes, just in case. They had seemed impressed with my freelance editing and my blogging experience, but I didn't get my hopes up. I wrapped up classes and most of my finals and left for my parents' house. I submitted my last assignments and, the next day, got the call offering me the internship and asking when I could start.

I've had to revise and update my resume several times in the past few months, and each time, I've had to delete things. Because 19 year old college sophomores cannot have a resume over one page. It's just too much, you know? But I could, if it wasn't so absurd. 

Instead of having a social life or a steadily paying job, I made friends. You could call it "networking" if you wanted, but I really do consider myself friendly with many of these people. These friends are the real reason my resume is so full. They've trusted me - to read for them, to edit with them, to review them, to help publicize them. Blogging sparked a fire in me to help get books out in the world and into reader's hands, then helped me want to make them better. They just kept feeding the fire and making me more ambitious, more desiring of being able to do something.

It's February 10, I've been an intern for a month, and I'm already getting ready to apply for summer internships. They're way more competitive than semester internships, but I'm hoping that future possible employers will see this semester's internship and be as enthused by it as my current employer was by my freelancing. I've now been a freelancer for over a year, at my own company for almost 6 months. I continue helping out as an assistant, though not as efficiently as I used to. I blog sporadically, though I'm now reading a lot of my company's titles which I won't review while I work there. I'm almost halfway through college. And I've realized that I'm going to have to be VERY picky about how social I am to make sure house work and homework gets done. But that works for me because...I'm not really social, unless I'm talking with other publishing people.

So. There you go. That's been my publishing journey to date. Long and rather boring and spanning over five years. It's missing a lot of the little moments that really make this journey worthwhile for me because I could spend AGES on the details. Those are the fun parts, though. The parts that make me want to continue in this crazy ride. 

--Julie