Journal Entry 4

I was rather excited, recently, to have been able to edit my Supervisor’s latest book.  My work was not editing in the traditional sense, however.  I have never read one of my Supervisor’s fantasy series books so I was uniquely qualified for judging my Supervisor’s latest release, a spinoff of that series, for its ability to act as a jumping on point for new readers.  I marked parts of the book that could better explain the setting for a person who had never read a book from the original series and made my recommendations about the overarching issues.  This was a very interesting learning experience.  Romance is not my usual genre and this was most certainly a fantasy romance.  I certainly know what to do now if I ever decide to write a spinoff.  It is often an easy thing to just throw in a little extra description to clue your readers into a piece of setting information.  You just need to be conscious of the fact that your readers need to be told what is going on.  This might be a good thing to keep in mind for writing novels in general.  It is just a helpful thing to remind your readers of little details that they might not fully remember from previous books.  There are times when I wish George R.R. Martin would be better about this because from one book to another I sometimes forget what a character looks like or what side they are on.   

The other side of this task that was so interesting to me is that my work felt really useful.  My brainstorming work has had a similar feeling to it but this is direct assistance on a soon to be released novel.  I think this has been some of my favorite work thus far for just that reason.  This has been a high point of this internship.   

Another assignment that I was given for the new book was to submit my recommendations for software to create a fantasy world map for her new release.  As an additional way of introducing new readers to the setting, my Supervisor thought it would be a good idea to include a map of the world.  I don’t know if I got much out of this task except that I now know of some sites and programs that can help me create a map for any fantasy books I wish to write.   

Though my internship is coming to an end, there is still a future to speculate on with this organization.  My Supervisor has offered to aid me in any publishing I try to do in the future.  She has even offered to publish me with her own company.  Normally an independent writer would have to create his own company and start from scratch but she would publish me much in the same way as a big publishing company publishes its many authors.  My professional relationship with this organization may be far from over.  I don’t know if I am going to go through with this partnership but I think it sounds like a pleasing option.