Project: "You Finish the Story"
River Valley Newspapers began an initiative in late 2020 inviting readers to take a prompt written by our editors and finish it with their own stories. Below are descriptions, galleries of the author's profiles and links to the finished articles.
James Poehling
"The War Eagle"
This inaugural winner took a rather plain initial prompt -- one that highlighted the local holiday season alongside the depths of pandemic lockdown -- in a wonderfully strange direction, to my delight.
I found myself in his corner during evaluation, but our reviewers reached a quick consensus.
Andrew D. Christianson
"One Last Game"
This entry I had to fight for. As a nerd and fantasy-writer myself, I squared up for this piece and argued its case on great dialogue, scene building and character work. His piece featured two titans of their field clashing in battle, only to learn something more personal to each.
Sandra Walterman
"A Chance Encounter"
I was invited by my editor to write the prompt for this entry, which aimed to recognize how the post-pandemic "new normal" impacted people. This winner stuck out as one new to writing but held the promise of a developing artist. As such, I was happy to interview the writer and encourage her future aspirations.
Halloween Special Edition
Halloween is my personal favorite holiday, and thus we pulled out all the stops for this event. My prompt gleaned a great many more entries, and our winning stories were both paralyzing and poignant, bringing new meaning to 'haunting' prose.
Copyediting
In my time at River Valley Newspapers, I took on more and more duties until finally becoming one of our daily copydesk jockeys. In this aspect, I worked one-on-one with remote designers to prioritize and highlight local work, giving input and creative impetus on major design features. I couldn't claim all the work, but I also know I stood out among my peers for such pageantry, and found my designers often more enthused for it.
Prose line-editing
Throughout my undergrad career, I gravitated towards classes, clubs and Honor Societies which helped to hone my skill in offering constructive yet concrete feedback on the works of my peers. I often sought out a personable relationship with classmates in order to understand the mindset of their writing and what they were aiming to communicate, then worked with them to refine their wordcraft at length.