rissy stories

Hey guys!

I’m back with another short update for this travel entry series!

(Disclaimer: If this is the first post you’re reading, I must oblige by a “cone of silence” in regards to this program, so I have to be very vague. Sorry in advance).

We also didn’t do anything extremely exciting these two days – we were still settling in and going to classes.

Day 5: July 16th, Tuesday

So, this day started off pretty chaotic – with a text from my mother, asking what happened with my bank account because I had less than $100 overnight when there was more than $1,000 the night before.

Well, the freaking car rental happened.

They’d already charged me for the car when I reserved it months ago, but I had no idea that they were going to charge me almost the exact amount again on the day that I picked up the car. (Disclaimer: I didn’t do anything about it when I first arrived because I had already been through hell and back that day – it’s in my first blog post if you want to check it out, because it’s a hot mess and I really don’t want to relive it again – and I really just wanted to grab the car and check into my apartment so I could sleep)

I told myself I would deal with the mess later.

Later is today.

In my defense – it wasn’t brought to my attention that they were taking the second installment immediately, and that even if I returned the car, a refund wasn’t possible.

So, I panicked. I was about to spend a month here with little to no money.

It took about a half hour to fix that mess, but once it was figured out, I rushed to get ready for my day.

All in all, I don’t regret getting a rental, it’s been extremely helpful. But if you’re under 25, think twice before getting one.

First, we had a literary agent speak with us about trade publishing. Long story short (and without breaking any “cone of silence” rules), we learned about nonfiction and fiction book proposals.

Just for my fellow writers’ information: heads up, agents turn down about 99% of everything that’s sent to them down – so make your query letters and proposals stand out! Fiction writers also need to have the entire manuscript completely written out and finished before it’s submitted to an agent.

To my surprise, I was extremely engaged in this talk. I had no intentions of becoming a literary agent before this day, but now I’m seriously considering it. And I’m currently two and a half weeks into this program, so I still have more career talks to sit through, but this one still has most of my interest, shockingly.

Afterwards, we had lunch, then began the first day of our editing workshop. We discussed the different aspects of publishing that we would be covering over the next two weeks as well as the overall job of an editor & editorial assistant.

And we relaxed for the rest of this day, it was another long one.

Day 6: July 17th, Wednesday

Editing Workshop Day 2: we had a fake editorial meeting, and we learned more about how those meetings work.

After lunch, we discussed the business of publishing, a.k.a: “English majors trying to do math.” We learned about contracts, advances, and royalties, and we also learned how to incorporate this as well as manufacturing, sales, and other income into a P&L sheet.

It’s incredibly overwhelming, the amount that needs to be taken into consideration when crunching numbers.

After a stressful day of math, my roommates and I helped ourselves to Voodoo Donuts.

Best donut I’ve ever had. That voodoo donut with the pretzel sticking out of it had berry filling (I can’t remember if it was raspberry or strawberry, but it was some type of berry), and it was THE BEST.

And we also enjoyed the sunset. (One of MANY).

I’ll never get over the sunsets here.

Until next time,

Rissy ❤