Why Publishing

NB: This is part of a scholarship application I recently submitted.

One day when I was six years old, my first grade teacher decided to tell us how books became books. My response could best be described as incredulity. Edits and rewrites? Multiple rewrites? Why not just do it right the first time? Art and design departments? Surely once you had all the pictures together, the rest of that stuff would only take five minutes. Why all this pointless time wasting?

These questions bothered me for years; I thought about them every time I picked up a book. I didn't know what I was missing, but I knew it had to be something. When I became interested in writing at the age of 13, I began to understand a little more. When I was 15 I read The Complete Idiot's Guide to Getting Published, but while it answered many of my questions, it only raised more.

This course is the culmination of 18 years of curiosity, and I'm approaching it with a mindset that would have given my six-year-old self homicidal thoughts. I don't want all my questions answered. Oh I want some of them answered, of course, but not all. I want to spend my life learning everything I can about books. I want to wake up in the morning with a smile on my face because I know that when I go into work I will discover something new. I don't want a job so easy I can be perfect at it, I want a job where I make mistakes because new things are happening and there's something more for me to learn.

The MA in Publishing will prepare me well for my career in the industry, but it is not my end point. The next year will answer many questions for me, but I expect many more will be raised, which is how it should be. This course is a starting point, both for my career and my continued personal development. I want to learn what I'm good at, and what I'm bad at. I want to learn about things that seem to have nothing to do with editorial work because I think knowing all those different things will only make me a better editor.