Basically, a little less than a year until I graduate from college and can finally apply to those jobs that require a Bachelor degree.
But where to next? That is the big question.
Most people assume when I say that my major is English that I want to teach,
and that is not exactly the case.
I’ve thought about teaching, briefly, but it feels for me as a career for when I’m older and my kids (if/when I have any) would be older as well. I would have to teach at least 11th grade English, and follow the formula my 11th grade teacher made us do. Read, make the arguments to him, he’d argue the other sides, and made sure we wrote a lot. Only English class I had that prepared me for college. Well, my senior English teacher did tell me to always follow the professor’s format for papers, but that is pure stylistic choice. (And the only way you’ll pass any college course.)
Mostly, I want to edit. Books, articles, I’m hesitant about newspapers, but copy-editing is copy editing. Book editing I’m most excited about because I love to follow an author through that process of defining, then redefining, and then molding the plot together into the characters and have situations be curious and attention grabbing. I’ve been working on short stories, I’m three chapters into a novel, with a couple other novels in the beginning stages, and, as WordPress and those of you who read here know best, I have a penchant for off-kilter poetry at times. Rant about a subject, argument, bring in examples from stories, and possible ways to make the story more striking to the reader, to pull the eyes through the tale even when they know they should be asleep but aren’t so when they do wake for the morning and go to work they feel like weights are dragging down their face–but even so people read because they cannot stop reading the tale that captivates, inspires, and fulfills a need to experience what you yourself have not actually gone through, except as a passenger by vision(or hearing or touch, depending on how you have access to stories) alone. That is the most amazing thing of stories. Simple words alined to bring new worlds or perspectives to anyone who pays attention enough to get anything out of it.
I’ve loved books since I was 3 years old. I need to be around them. As Mom said to me recently, “You seem lost when you don’t have a book to read at the moment.” Because when I’m not actually reading, but in the middle, that’s where my head is still at. Same goes when I’m in the middle of writing a story. Which is always. As I am improving, expanding, writing long stories, and still trying to condense two different ideas I have into some flash fiction to get my words out there and to pave the way for some novels.
That’s my peace, there is what I want my life to consist of, but with the vaguest way into it, and a long year to make the journey seem like it’s undergoing instead of still a daydream spilled out into a post of another unknown writer trying to bust her way into the business.
Thanks for reading, if you made it through. Advice, criticism, random bursts of thought, feeling, or lecture is always accepted in one way or another.
