I’m Emily Glaser, and I write stories. Here’s mine.
In a lot of ways, my entree into writing and editing was an accident. In 2013, while casually scrolling Craigslist for a day job to supplement my evening shifts at a restaurant (and to quiet the inner voice telling me it was well past time to make some kind of post-college career move), I paused over a job listing at a magazine. When I looked at their website, I found error after error: comma splices, dangling modifiers, blatant misspellings. When I went in for an interview for an SEO position, I raised my concerns about their solecisms and suggested I fix those, instead. Despite what was, in hindsight, foolhardy presumption, I left that day with a position as executive editor of a monthly print luxury lifestyle publication.
But in a lot of ways, this admission into editorial wasn’t an accident. Who knows what types of serendipitous star alignment takes place to make a writer, but I can point to a few in my own galaxy: a mother who devoured books constantly and copiously; an older sister I idolized whose journals, filled with poetic teen angst, lined the shelves in our bedroom; a globe-trotting father who brought souvenirs and stories back from far-off places like Nicaragua, Indonesia, and Kenya.
Whatever the factors, the writing bug bit me young and seeped its sweet poison into my veins until they pumped with ink and allegory. In elementary school, I wrote ten page essays where my classmates wrote two; I remember begging my teacher for extra time to scribble sentences while the rest of the class bent their heads over multiplication tables and science experiments. In middle school, when the projector cast a hazy D.O.L. on the screen, I’d promptly jot down the sentence sans-errors and wait for my classmates to finish. In high school, while other teens were experimenting with love and drugs and invisible lines their parents drew in the sand, I sat at the family computer and pecked out FanFiction with Harry Potter plot lines, answering the digital cries of a gaggle of teenage readers asking for more.
So it’s no surprise that when I enrolled at Davidson College in the fall of 2008, I had every intention of being an English major. When an advisor sat before my small group in orientation and asked who already knew their major, I raised my hand—and she laughed. With the kind of condescension reserved for those on the brink of adulthood and autonomy, she told me and the handful of other students with my same confidence that we would change our minds.
While I am many things—creative, logical, diligent, introspective—I am, first and foremost, what we Southerners call stubborn. Tenacious. Willful. Obstinate. When someone tells me I won’t do something, you can just about guarantee I will. Needless to say, I graduated with a degree in English. And when my creative writing professor suggested I was not meant for a career in writing, my vocation was, in fact, decided. The same stubborn streak that dictated I had to be an English major also destined me to a career in writing.
Which means my entry into writing and editing wasn’t so much an accident as it was a sink-or-swim introduction to the inevitable. In that first editor position, I learned everything because I knew nothing: how to offer feedback to writers, check photo resolution, handle a budget; what to look for in story pitches, freelancers, and to spot plagiarism. I learned about InDesign, SEO, the inflexibility of print deadlines, and the role of advertisers in editorial.
But most of all, I learned what makes a story great. A great story—whether it’s a long-form editorial or a small business’ website copy—requires semantic acuity, sure (that’s what got me the job, after all), but more importantly, it demands honesty, introspection, and dance-step phrasing that opens the hearts, minds, and sometimes wallets of those who read it. Reading a great story should feel not so much like a task as an experience. And writing a great story? It’s the greatest feeling on earth.
Eight years later, I’ve hopscotched across the country and editorial roles, standing at the helm of four print magazines and managing dozens of contributors. I’ve also kept my freelance pencil sharpened and written for a dozen publications on topics as wide-ranging as James Beard-nominated chaat chefs to fourth-generation farmers, facial plastic surgery to weekly art and music updates.
While I love editorial, copywriting has stolen a piece of my writerly heart, too. I’ve written for businesses large and small, through consulting firms and branding agencies as well as independently. Copywriting is the writer’s stage, the chance to slip into the voice of someone else and play around with their words until it sounds just right. Plus, the impact of copywriting is measurable; where editorial can feel like flinging words into a void, with copywriting you can measure and analyze the results.
These days, I manage writers and editors by day and tap out my own stories—and those of others—by night. If yours is a story you’d like me to tell, let’s be in touch.
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