Miranda Rizzolo shares insights on being the editor as artist, using the editing process as a creative profession—developed during her internship at the LA Review of Books. Los Angeles Review of Books.

Another Way to Be an Artist: Editing as a Collaborative Art Form by Miranda Rizzolo

By age six, I knew I wanted to be an artist. Not a visual artist — my painting would unfortunately never progress beyond the squishy blobs taped to my refrigerator. But an artist who told stories. My childhood was spent in imaginary worlds: writing fantastical tales, dancing in pink tutus, and reciting made-up monologues from atop my living-room coffee table.

Fourteen years later, I still spend half my life rehearsing shows, the other half reading books. I don’t know exactly what I want to do with my life, but I have to give the child-me some credit, as my general ambition remains the same: tell stories. I figure I’ll probably be an actress or a writer — equally dependable professions, my parents assure me.

Listening to my upperclassmen friends rant about the common travails of fetching coffee and filing endless piles of paperwork, I decided that summer internships were overrated. Still, this summer I resolved to put my artistic ventures on hold. Spurred by my “I’m-halfway-through-college” crisis, I set out to attain some marketable skills (or, at the very least, a resume booster). I decided I wanted to try editing, a more practical and potentially attainable career choice for an English major, I thought. And despite my painful lack of experience, by some stroke of serendipity, I got an internship at the LA Review of Books.

Continue reading the original post at the Los Angeles Review of Books blog.

Official White House Photo of Obama’s edited speech by Pete Souza.