Major Project Proposal for Editor Internship

The topic of my project will be on the subject of editing, and I will be making connections between CreatedHere and my role as online editor. This research will directly benefit CreatedHere as the quality of my work should increase as a result of the research. I will start with providing background information on CreatedHere—information about how it was started, it’s mandate, and how my role fits into the organization on the whole to contextualize the remainder of my project. I will use the website to collect this information (sources listed at the end.) As I am personally interested in book publishing and wish to become my own book publisher, I want to compare the work I am doing now with the work I want to do in the future. By focusing on the similarities as opposed to the differences between the two roles, I can determine the transferable skills I already possess while also noting the ones I still need to improve upon.

CreatedHere offers two platforms for publishing: a printed publication and an online platform through their website and social media. The printed publication is reserved for artists of a more professional caliber, while the online platform is intended as a stepping-stone to promote and encourage artists who are either starting out or who have never written professionally before. My role at CreatedHere is online editor, which in many cases, results in substantive editing. As I am working with 14 different writers over the course of my placement this summer, the style and quality of each article I work with is vastly different, and I want to find out if there is a way to better navigate these waters. I find editing an incredibly intuitive process, but that does not mean that skills can’t be picked up or perfected, so I want my research to be able to aid my work as I go.

I want to look into how the work I’m doing currently relates to the job I wish to create for myself in the future. The first obvious connection is the editing portion: what are the connections between creative non-fiction and classic literature, and how are the editing styles—substantive versus proofreading—similar. It is obvious how they are different, but I want to focus on the overlaps of each to see how I can apply the skills I do have to determine what I need to work on for the future. Further, as I want to become my own book publisher, what are the parallels between an independent magazine that publishes submissions and an independent book publisher that publishes works from the public domain? This question may not make it into my project, but I will definitely be looking into it because that would be tangible help for me. A good way for me to do this would be by finding a similar company in lieu of mine and comparing it with CreatedHere. Those Great Little Books would be a good start for this.

My intention on the final outcome is three-fold. At the very least, I will know a great deal more about editing and the genre of creative non-fiction, a genre of writing I know very little about currently. As I am currently editing this genre, this seems an essential research topic. Another outcome I will have is a better understanding of the differences between types of publishers in a practical sense as well as how, despite the disparities, they may be similar in some respects (magazine versus book publisher). Finally, I will know more about the environment in which I want to start a business and hopefully be better prepared when that time comes. By understanding more of the whole, I can delve deeper within my niche. My final project will be in report form, and I will use various sources including books and articles. Some sources are included below.

Potential Sources:

https://www.createdhere.ca/

http://greatlittlebooks.com/

Dent, Stu, and Institute for Career Research. Careers in Journalism: Writing, Reporting, Editing: Newspapers, Magazines, Websites: Local Students Follow Their Joy of Writing, Decide to Become Journalists, Discover They Can Get Paid for Doing Their Homework. Institute for Career Research, 2005.

Evans, Michael Robert. The Layers of Magazine Editing. Columbia University Press, 2004.

Gutkind, Lee. “Creative Nonfiction in the Crosshairs: Lee Gutkind Responds to the Never-Ending Debate.” Creative Nonfiction, no. 22, 2004, pp. 3–15. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/44363057.

Irvine, Dean J. Editing Modernity: Women and Little-Magazine Cultures in Canada, 1916-1956. University of Toronto Press, 2008.

Mann, Michele H. “How to Edit the Passive Writer's Work.” Technical Communication, vol. 32, no. 3, 1985, pp. 14–15. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43094521.

Parsons, Les. Revising & Editing: Using Models and Checklists to Promote Successful Writing Experiences. Pembroke Pub, 2001.

Plotnik, Arthur. The Elements of Editing: A Modern Guide for Editors and Journalists. Macmillan, 1982.

Puri, Manohar. Art of Editing. Pragun Publications, 2006.