Current Issue . . . Vol 26/01 mailed February 2008

ISSN 1499-3082

• Clipping Rejections in the Bud - Linda Berganske
• Interview with Jane Kirkpatrick - Marcia Laycock
• Cooking Leftovers - Tatiana Claudy
• Time Management: A Writer's Problem - Donna Dawson
• Pray for Me - Ruth O'Neil
• To Be A Writer - Gay Ingram
• Lessons from the IT Boom - Rekha Ambardar
• How to Build a Freelance Career - Patricia Fry
• Don't Miss Those Seasonal Articles - Suzan L. Wiener
• A Draft to Remember - Paige Spawn Pierle
• The Opportunities Found in Rejection - Roy A. Barnes

• Who is My Neighbour? - Sulochana Vinayagamoorthy
• Write Side Up - Craig Funston
• Shorter Shortest - Violet Nesdoly
• Pam Mytroen - Shirley Tye
• Tracking Document Changes - Elsie Montgomery
• Filing Strategies - Joanna Mallory
• Warm Soup for the Soul, Anyone? - Glynis M. Belec

• From the Executive - (link is to annual report)
• Inscribers Write! - Bonnie Way
• The ICWF Executive Team

SUBMIT AN ARTICLE  First, please read our Writers Guidelines !

OPPORTUNITIES with InSCRIBE

NOTE: These positions are available to members in good standing.

Vice President
Must be a member in good standing. Contact us for more information.

Spring WorDshop Coordinator
The Spring WorDshop in Calgary has been cancelled this year due to a lack of leadership. Janet Seever has organized this conference for the past several years, but has had to step down this year due to her husband’s stroke. This event is organized by a committee, supported by but separate from the Inscribe executive. If you are interested in organizing or coordinating a Spring Conference for next year, please contact us.

InScribe Representatives
Positions are open in NB, BC, QC and the YUKON. If you are a member living in one of these provinces and would like to be our contact there, please contact us.

Fall Conference Committee
This is a wonderful opportunity to get involved in the Fall Conference. Even if you can only play a small part, your help will be appreciated. The committee meets a couple times a year to plan and discuss ideas. Contact us for more information.

ListServ Moderator
Contact for job description

Web Design
This could be a team effort. Our webmaster would like some help, perhaps assigning the care/upkeep of certain pages to one or more team members. Right now, this site is designed and posted with MS FrontPage 2003, so you need to have that software and know something about using it. Contact for more information.
 

• I glanced over the proofs and sighed as I picked up my red pen and marked the comma in once again. For a while I stared at it, wondering if it was really worth being picky over. Did it matter if there was a comma there? Yes, I decided. Yet as I walked down the hallway to my layout person, I felt like I was being an exacting, anal editor, coming back - again - because one little comma had gotten overlooked when she was processing my edits.

• Sometimes as an editor, I feel like I spend my entire day picking out other people’s mistakes. This is spelled wrong, that is punctuated wrong, this is formatted wrong, and my job is to find those errors. Sometimes I look at a mistake - a tiny little error, just one misplaced semi-colon or a paragraph that doesn’t line up against the margin - and wonder if it is worth the work to correct it. Often I spend minutes debating over punctuation or grammar, altering a sentence only to change my mind and put it back again. I reach for my dictionary and style guide over and over.

• Editing is frequently about little tiny details, but in focusing on those, I cannot lose sight of the big picture. The big picture is to connect with the reader. Whatever document I am working on - a letter, a manual, a story - I want to help the writer reach his audience. If something is unclear and puzzling to me, then it will be unclear and puzzling to the reader. If I stop because a lack of punctuation has caused an ambiguity, it needs to be fixed. If I stumble over spelling mistakes and punctuation errors, so will the reader.
  My job is not to pick on the writers or to annoy my layout editors. My job is to make the writing the best it can be, so that it will reach the audience, so that the reader will be drawn into the writing, caught up in the message or the story.

• That is why I edit.
  
  ~Bonnie Ross, FellowScript Editor, aka the Koala Bear Writer

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