Here we are, at the first day of WordCon1, a series of a three-day
conferences organized by my school to talk and discuss, through personal
experiences, different aspects of the writing and publishing world. Possible
careers, incentives to write and how to survive in this hard-to-break-into
industry are some of the topics we—students at first, second and third year of
the Bachelor degree, students of Diploma, teachers and guests—are going to cover
during these three days. I can’t participate to the whole WordCon1, but I’m at
the opening and will attend on the last day.
In front of my eyes, there is Marika*, an editor but also an ex-classmate
from when I was in first year and although she was at her third when I first
met her, we studied two subjects together. Unlikely me, she moved with
confidence. I was new, surrounded by native speakers of English, struggling to
cope with the language, as well as trying to adjust to the new environment and completing
school assignments. Immerse in a room full of English speaker was like living
in a bubble in which sounds come distorted to your ears and events displayed in
front of you don’t appear clearly to your eyes. A feel of disconnection with
the place and the people that surrounded me overwhelmed me. This was not my place. I was an intruder.
I looked at Marika with the same stare you turn to the student at
year 12 when you have just started school: a mix of admiration and bewilderment,
and the dream that one day you will grow up to be like them. Except that the
gap between us was not much about the age but more about the knowledge (firstly,
of course, the knowledge of English, although for her this was natural) and
familiarity.
And here Marika is now. She’s come here to talk about her experience
after having graduated in 2014. Marika, now an editor, the incarnation of the
proof that my studies actually might take me somewhere out there, into the ‘industry’ of publishing.
I’ve made some previous attempts to enter in it, along with the assistance of a
teacher, applying both as a possible employer and as an intern; however, I’ve
had no luck yet.
I see her and I think about myself. I’m a student at third year now,
as she was when we met; I’m not confident as she was—sometimes,
I still feel in that bubble—but I definitely closer to her than to the version
of me of two years ago.
Our
eyes meet, she recognises me; she smiles and comes to hug me. We chat a bit and
I feel good. That smile and hug of recognition make me strongly realise that I belong to something, make me
strongly realise of being part of something, part of a past to which she had
belonged and we share. Among all new faces, I’m the connection to her past in
this school. I’m not anymore an intruder; I feel that these old and new walls
belong to me as they belonged to her.
The
gap between us has, in some way, found a bridge. But there is a new gap now:
I’m still a student while she’s become a publishing assistant. She is a
freelancer editor, illustrator and children’s books writer; three fields in
which I’d like to land one day.
Marika
explains to all of us that she started with a non-paid internship at a small
publishing house. Once a week, she went there and put to practice what she had
learnt at school whilst learning new things. She started proofreading texts:
checking for misspellings, for coherence in the number of pages and in the fonts
used, scrutinising other elements that cannot be missed before publication.
Then, she stepped up to other more complex phases of editing.
She
must have been passionate and diligent, because after a while the publisher
told her that they have nothing more to teach her. They proposed her to work
autonomously on a manuscript. And she did, working on her own in close contact
with the author; helping him to recount his story; polishing it to be presented
to the public. From that moment, other manuscripts have passed under Marika’s
hands and turned into books which are currently on the market.
I
take her business card. I haven’t given up; I’m still in the search of an
internship. Perhaps, I’ve been looking to the wrong direction. I look at Marika’s
business card with the big logo of a bird at the front and it lights hope within
me.
*Name
has been changed
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