Life at the Ensign

Okay, some people (*cough* Mom *cough*) have been complaining a little bit that my blog is not particularly informative about me.

*Blink blink* You guys want to read about me? Really?

Okay, well, once upon a time there was this fabulously successful book editor who owned her own publishing company...

Oh wait. That's how I think about me. Right.

Alright, alright, I give.

Life has been, well, fabulous, really. I love it. Confidentiality agreements prevent me from revealing a lot of the things that make my life so wonderful, but the stories I edit every day are incredibly educational and uplifting. Even if I wake up late and barely make it to work on time and am consequentially grouchy, just a few minutes at my desk working on an article can cheer me up.

I'm even writing some pieces of my own for the Ensign and the Liahona. When I first started the internship, I was a little terrified of writing, but for the last week or so, I've been itching to get some manuscripts written. I've found (with the help of the extremely supportive editorial staff) a couple of topics and submissions that, guided through my editorial voice, will hopefully become wonderful articles. Set for a more hazy future are some purely "me" ideas that haven't entirely been developed yet. But on the whole, I'm really excited to have the chance to tell someone else's story. That's how many of the articles in the magazines are, you know.

In the interim, we're in the middle of pre-general-conference madness where the rule is "drop everything when something conference-related comes up" so naturally my writing pieces aren't getting much TLC right now.

I've been doing a lot of proofreading of conference talks, which basically means that you sit down with someone else with two copies of the talk: one with the very light editorial changes (usually just a comma or two), as well as speaker revisions on it, and one that's "clean," or supposedly has all the changes made. One person reads the talk (including all punctuation--there's a special "language" for it: bang for the exclamation point, paren/end paren for the parentheses, com for a comma, point for a period, etc) and the other person follows along on the clean copy, marking discrepancies if there are any.

Fun fact: I catch myself reading punctuation sometimes now. Like when I'm writing, or when I'm reading a book on my lunch break.

It's really neat, actually. Having done that on the Relief Society Broadcast talks, I found that I actually got a lot more out of the talks when they were given because I'd already read them. Hearing the speakers' inflection and tone added a whole new layer of meaning to a subject I was already familiar with.

At conference, we get about 140 pages' worth of new information to process. Yes, the topics may be familiar, but the presentation of those topics is unique every time. It can honestly be a bit of an information overload. That's why it's so important to go back and read the talks in the conference issue (that was not a shameless plug for my job, I swear). Getting to proof the talks beforehand just makes it easier to process while I'm listening.

Granted, there are probably people who don't need that. Some people are amazing at processing audio information. Me, I have to sit and stew over it in print for awhile before I can really extract meaning from it.

Besides all of that, my favorite thing about my job is the people. They are incredible. They have so many diverse backgrounds, both professionally and personally. A lot of them have absolutely wicked senses of humor.

All in all, I love my job. My life is so fulfilling right now. :)