As the semster as come to an end, my weekly blog posts will become more sparse. I do not say they will end because I will be continuing my journey with Toyon into the spring semester. Myself, along with a group of others, will be meeting to discuss the realease of our 63rd issue of Toyon, the steps needed to reach these goals, and then making it happen. My goal is to use this website to post about what we're doing, goals, accomplishments, timelines, etc., in order to keep myself organized and keep the site alive. In addtion, I'll be able to add to my examples and resume section all the things I accomplish during this time.
Over the semester I've realized how essential having an updated website is to meeting my goals. The weekly blog posts kept me writing, kept me motivated in thinking about ways to progress in Toyon, how I planned to do these things, and most importantly kept me on track with production. Having posted a timeline to the website worked fantastically as a reminder when I would pause about what I orginially wanted/needed to do that week in regards to my role. I often found myself rereading posts to see if I had met my goals, and if not, how I could meet them in the next week. Having a place where all my ideas, goals, actions, and schedule were all together made the semster feel way less stressful as I could easily navigate through my website to keep up. At first when I created the site I felt embarrased because I had zilch to put on here. I was at a loss in how I was going to bulk things up and make the pages look good. What was to go where, and how? What examples should I have and again, how to arrange it all? What should be on here and what should I leave out? Once I began the weekly posts, doing all the readings, looking into job descriptions, talking to other students and faculty advisor, I was able to transform a seemingly barren patch of internet into a garden of knowledge and experience. The previously mentioned helped give me a starting place and from there it became second nature to be thinking about how I could apply what I've done inside and outside of Toyon to my blog. As my website started coming along, I noticed the potential it had and all it could do for me. I became invested in creating a website I was proud of. A huge thing was to stop viewing it as a school assignment only myself and the professor would see, and start looking at it as a career tool. Ever since I became confident in my webiste, I began telling other students they should make one too and why it's beneficial for them. Once I saw how far I've come with my website, I realized how silly it would be to discontinue using it. I've put so much work into all my posts, constantly changing things around, adding and deleting, that it'd be a shame to let it all end with the semester. As I continue on my path of being a writer and editor, there will be much more I can add to this site. Having a place to keep everything I've learned, done, and can do, is a wonderful way to show future employers everything they might want to know about me. Contrary to my feelings in the beginning, I now view my website a valuable asset to my career path, and as a tool I want to keep sharpening.
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When thinking about Toyon's future, the first word that came to mind was "expansion." Toyon has this breadth of quality writing laying in wait to be read, and sadly, I've come to realize that many issues will never leave the Toyon room. Growth in our readership is neccessary for our literary journal, and while we are supported by the university, many university students aren't even aware of Toyon exists. For the literary journal's future, advertising must become a more important feature. While we're trying consistently to advertise our call for submissions and produce the journal, we fail to advertise simply reading Toyon and it's newest issue. Additionally, while the semester progressed I noticed a lack of flyers, which means students weren't being made aware of the journal at all once the time limit of having your flyer posted, was up. Since we know there's a limit to how long our flyers will be allowed to stay on the boards in the halls, we can keep a sheet to track this and re-post flyers as needed.
There's a tendency to do a week or two of advertisment, then forgetting all about promoting Toyon as the deadline for submissions passes. In order to keep Toyon's presence strong amongst HSU, fliers, tabling, etc., need to continue throughout the semester, not just at one stage of production. As I mentioned before, many students have no idea we exist and we need to change that by reaching out to them more than we have in the past. An idea to increase awareness of Toyon in general, is by creating t-shirts for the staff. Staff members can wear their shirts periodically throughout the semester increasing Toyon's exposure, and encouraging others to ask "what's Toyon?" or be reminded of us throughout their day. When I created a shirt for Astronomy day I had many people coming up to me and asking where I got my shirt from and what was astronomy day. This allowed me to pitch the event to the student, answer any questions they have, and invited them to joing the event on Facebook to remind them of it later. When someone says they're attending an event through Facebook, it posts to their wall, increasing the amount of people exposed to the event. When thinking about the spring release, I feel we could apply the same ideas listed above. We could have the students involved in the spring course, consistently advertising the release different ways each week. For example, we table a few days for the first week, next we post the flyer another week, and as we draw closer to the date, we announce to our classes, then repeat. Again, I think t-shirts would be a great way to effortlessly advertise ourselves and engage in conversations with the public about who we are and what we do. Something I would reccomend for future staff members, are to think of other ways to engage our readership with Toyon. By this I mean asking the reader's to submit their personal suggestions, comments, stories, etc. about Toyon, to Toyon. We could encourage people to speak with us so we can tailor our content to what people want to read about. Or we could have them send photos of them reading our journal so we can post it to our social media platforms. Another idea could be taking personal testimony from reader's and sharing them at the end of the journal. We could advertise this to our readership, asking them to submit what Toyon means for them for a chance to be published at the end of the journal. For me it felt as if there's a disconnect between us and the audience, and I want future staff to work on creating a bridge between the journal and the audience. People want to feel as if they're apart of something, that they have a voice. Over the next five years that's something I see Toyon working on giving them, in addition to becoming more aggressive in advertising our journal outside of submissions. Jocelyn and I put together a document for current and future staff memebers about what's available to them outside of Toyon. For awhile, it seemed there wasn't anything outside of Toyon for us English Majors to be apart of, but this semster we put ourselves to work, found the skills desired by employers, emailed a few proffessors, then put together how students can attain these skills through other courses offered here at HSU and College of the Redwoods (CR), along with literature aids to help guide them along the way. We open with a video about what it means to be an Editor, as it can be hard for some to fully grasp all that we are responsible for. This is meant to be a living doc. for others to add to as they find other valuable resources for students that will help them develop themselves further as Editors, and gain neccesary experience to land the jobs they apply for. |
resources_for_staff_members_looking_to_build_on_their_editorial_skills.docx | |
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After reading "On the Conjunction of Editing and Compositions" by Peter Gizzi, he had put what editing meant to me in words I couldn't bring forth myself. I felt this qoute sums it up nicely, "In editing, one selects the culture one wants to endure," (231, Paper Dreams). My first role as a Poetry Editor allowed me to do just this, to select the poems I wanted the community to read, to select the poems I felt created a world I wanted to be apart of. I never thought so much would come from joining the Toyon staff, I though it would be a simple class that would satisfy some units and I'd eventually forget all about it. Wrong. For the first time in three years, I knew what I had wanted to do with my life and there was a motivation in me that had never existed before.
My role as an Editor has given me the skills, the experience, and the dedication I'll need for future jobs in the publishing world outside of my university. So far, I've bought 4-6 books all about publishing, edting, what makes a good story or a bad story, how to read poetry and short stories, all to help better myself and become a valuable member of the Toyon team. The skills learned on my time as a staff member go beyond the journal and have also helped me in other areas. As a writer myself, this course has helped me really put into perspective what I want to write, when to know what's good and what to cut, and what world I'm trying to create between those pages. Before I would just write aimlessly, maybe some heavily metaphored pieces, but now I'm able to put a focus on my work and criticize my own work effectively.
Back to how this would help me with future jobs, is I've learned a lot of the lingo, I've learned how to manage deadlines and communicate with other staff members, and ask for help when I'm confused about what my next step is in production. These are valuable skills needed for making it in the job market; being on the same page as your editorial team is an absolute must!
How I plan to use the skills I developed during the semester is to apply them (as mentioned in previous paragraphs) to my own work! I want to publish my own comic book one day and being on the staff has helped me understand the process and the complexity of publshing literature. I feel after the time spent on Toyon, I'll finally be able to make my way into self-publishing. For now, I'm going to use these skills to help land an internship! I want my next step to be working with another publication and expand my editorial reach. I want to work with comic books and graphic novels more than anything, Toyon has prepped me with everything I need to apply and get my foot in the door. Comic books have created a world for me to belong to since I picked up my first comic, Calvin and Hobbes. I finally had something that made my world a little brighter and all I want to do is help give this feeling of belonging, of possibility and insiration to others. Toyon has allowed me this opportunity with our literary journal, and will allow me to make it to the comic book industry where I will be apart of changing people's lives through literature.
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