Rory Ohr
A large part of my school’s curriculum, available to the juniors and seniors, is our internship program. Throughout the school year, every student searches for an internship that suits the career field they hope to go into. For me, that was the literary field, where I found Orca, A Literary Journal.
At the beginning of the internship, I truly had no idea what I would be doing. I had a very limited understanding of the inner workings of editing and publishing, and there is a definite learning curve to understanding how Submittable (the online site that handles submissions to Orca and other journals) works. Even once I understood the platform, my nervousness didn’t go away. Reviewing a work and commenting on it was easy. It was what I loved to do. Voting yes on a piece was exciting. But for every piece I voted yes on, I also inevitably had to vote no on another. There isn’t anything wrong with voting no on a submission, and one vote will not decide the fate of that piece. It’s a collaboration between all of the Orca readers, so it’s impossible to mess it up with your opinion, but it’s uncomfortable regardless. Gaining the courage to vote no on pieces instead of settling for the noncommittal comfort of a “maybe” vote was not easy, but support from other members of Orca really helped me. They encouraged me to say what I felt, not what I thought they expected me to say. In the end, I am glad for the discomfort of that situation. Without it, I would still be hesitant to give my opinions on things, big or small.
Communicating with other writers on staff had a large impact on me, but it also impacted the way I communicate with people who aren’t writers. I commonly get asked by my friends to review their English assignments because they know how much I enjoy writing, and I do enjoy editing their work. However, I struggled greatly with it. I could tell when something within a work didn’t flow correctly, or wasn’t right for the piece, but I couldn’t explain why. I could fix it for them, or give suggestions, but when they asked me why it didn’t work, I couldn’t tell them. A big part of reading for Orca, the main part of it in fact, is doing exactly that—explaining why you feel something doesn’t work within a submission. Seeing what terms other writers used to explain why certain things didn’t work helped me internalize that knowledge. By the end of my experience, I was able to turn “This doesn’t work for this piece,” into “This doesn’t work for this piece, and I can explain why.” It was a skill I didn’t know I needed, but one I desperately did, and Orca was the perfect place for me to foster it.
On the more personal side of the internship, I had the ability to ask the more senior members of Orca about their career paths, and their advice on such things. I have a lot of trepidation about college and the tremulous process that connects to that. They all had excellent advice on what paths I could take and helped me understand the differences a degree can have in the literary field. It isn’t always necessary—being a writer is not about a degree or certificate saying that’s who you are. It’s about how much you give to keep being a writer, the joy you take in it, the ability to play with words until they click into place like puzzle pieces. Talking with the staff at Orca helped me see that. Being a writer is hard, and they know that, so their greatest advice was that you can be a writer no matter what—you just have to keep putting effort into it and stay with it even when it’s hard. There are no guarantees of success in this field; and coming to terms with that is difficult. With all of that, the best advice anyone has ever given me came from a conversation in which they stressed: “Don’t Panic.” It’s a simple enough sentiment, but it held so much more weight when other members of the staff admitted it has affected them as well. Knowing that they understand what I am feeling, and that they believe in me regardless, has impacted my world view tremendously.
I keep that advice in the back of my mind even when I am not writing or contemplating my future career in the field. For once, surrounded by fellow writers who understood, I felt seen. This internship was never about school credits or mandatory curriculum for me, but still, I didn’t know how much it would end up meaning to me when I first started. I am a writer, and I have a lot of words and emotions and grammatical rules stored within me—yet I still find myself unable to describe the full weight and meaning this experience has given me. I can get close though, and that’s what this piece is.
Orca gave me an opening into the literary field, but it also helped me grow as a person. My writing has improved, but so has my ability to help those around me with their work. I am not the same writer I was when I went into this internship, and I will take that with me wherever I may go in my life. But for now, I will continue to stay and grow at Orca for as long as I possibly can—and I encourage anyone out there who is considering interning or becoming a reader at Orca to take the jump. Trust me. It’s worth it.
Rory Ohr is a young writer from Gig Harbor, WA. She is currently working on her first novel, and enjoys writing about self-discovery, psychological horror, fantasy worlds, and dystopias.
And we at Orca are honored by her commitment to our journal – the editors