I’ve had a pretty busy semester, but one of the things that kept me the busiest was being an editor of Papercut. Papercut is run by the Alpha Xi Phi chapter Sigma Tau Delta, the English Honor Society. I joined this semester, and it has been incredibly rewarding. I’ve learned so much about editing, working with a team, and producing an actual print copy of a literary journal.
At the beginning of the semester, Papercut was something that the last semester’s group had started but didn’t have as much time to make it well known. When some other members and I joined the honor society this semester, we decided that we were going to take Papercut and make it the best that it could possibly be. This meant creating an entirely new website, redoing how we were accepting submissions, opening it up to all majors in the school, and our biggest project: deciding to print it at the end of the semester.
We decided to switch platforms for the website, and while we were at it, completely redid the look. We tried to make it as easy as possible to navigate while still looking professional. To submit, we originally had people email us their submissions, but then we decided to create a form where people can submit their work. Moving forward, we hope to have a blind review submission process.
I volunteered to be one of the editors, and even though I’ve had experience outside of Papercut at editing, I still realized that I had a lot more to learn. I had to realize what kind of content we were looking for, what was “good” writing as opposed to “bad” writing. Sigma Tau Delta also holds workshops every week where we helped edit people’s work. One of the most rewarding moments of the semester was taking one student’s very rough draft and working with him through the whole process to get it to a point where we all agreed that it was ready to go on the website. It was a long process, but to see that student take into consideration our suggestions and grow as a writer was one of the best things of working with this group. It definitely makes it worth it at the end of the day.
We had some bumps, obstacles, and unexpected events along the way, but we’ve worked through them and learned more on how to efficiently run the journal. One of our biggest accomplishments was publishing the print copy in under three weeks. The end of the semester kind of snuck up on us, and we were scrambling at the end to make sure that we could have the journal printed and delivered on time.
We ended this semester’s work at the Creative Writing is not Dead Event on April 27, 2017, where we had several of our published authors read their work. This was also the official release date of Papercut, and it was amazing to see the author’s face light up when they saw their name in print. It was a really great event, and it made all of our hard work worth it.
(photo courtesy of Megan Hammer)
It took a lot of work from a lot of people to get Papercut to where it is right now, but this is only the beginning. We have some big plans and ideas for Papercut, so watch out for more improvements!
HC,
Alyssa Harmon