Sharing my student wisdom with those who can stand it

I’m the arts editor for the Projector.

With the job comes several challenges. Three repeatedly come to mind, actually.

1. Knowing I’m not an expert editor, but having to act confident about my decisions.
2. Acknowledging and accepting the fact that there are bigger, more popular news sources than mine – this means my story lists must be extra unique to draw attention.
3. Being in charge of the arts sections often means a lot of event coverage – because we print every two weeks the news gets old fast, so it’s a challenge to try and encourage writers to find a broader way to cover an event… sometimes even I’m not sure.

This week I’m working on hiring arts editor interns. They'll run the Projector while second-year CreComms are on workplacement. The task is both exciting, because I get to play a part in scouting new talent, and overwhelming, because who am I to say who's the best? I’m also reminded that I was in their shoes last year – how much could I have possibly learned since then?

A lot actually.

This position made everything my instructors had been telling me over the past year make sense. I realized writing needed to be clear before it could be creative. I also realized no writer is perfect. Something can always be fixed. Editing is like solving a puzzle – the edges are easy, it’s completing the inside that’s tough, and that's when many people give up.

A few things I’ve learnt since working for the Projector is:

• That assuming proper nouns are spelt correctly, no matter how good the writer is, is a bad idea
• That leads and context couldn’t be more essential to a story – a writer who can do both is talented
• That formatting is an annoying thing to have to fix, but an easy thing to fix
• That no matter how hard you try to make submission instructions clear, there’s always going to be someone who gets it wrong – you just have to deal with it
• That the best stories are the hardest to edit but you have to stick with them because there’s going to be something to fix
• That it's always important to double check facts
• That it's important to understand one can never stop editing, but one needs to – it’s important to keep the original story
• That headline writing is so not my thing

When editing, I try and give students feedback as much as possible because I know I always appreciate it when people do it for me. But, while I hope they consider my advice when I'm offering it, I also hope they take it with a grain of salt – it was only a year ago I was in their shoes.

Acting confident is something I continuously work on, so I don’t have a solution for that yet. However, I think I can pull it off in front of student writers; I just have to put up with my brain’s internal arguments later.

The latter two challenges I feel are self-explanatory. Every paper, big or small, deals with competition. Every paper tries to be unique. The only thing that makes me think the Projector has particular challenges is the fact that we have a small distribution and students within the program often say it’s weak.

This is what drives me to try and be extra creative with my story lists...which leads me to my next point: you can only try so hard and then it’s up to someone else.

I hate assigning event coverage stories. I try not to. Either I’ll try and guide the assigned writer into a direction that uses an event to drive a larger story or I’ll say what the larger story could be.

It's not always successful in the end, but I have to trust the writer did their best. The writers also have to trust that I do my best, but my best still isn't perfect. Although I might've learnt the above list of things doesn't mean I'm great at it. Those writing for me and I are all students.

And at the end of the day, all we can do is fake it ‘til we make it.