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Happy New Year! May your year be filled with all the good fortune that finding a four-leaf clover brings.
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Mark your calendar
- January 17, 2018: Member meeting
- February 21, 2018: Member meeting
Member meeting location: Community Room, Greater Victoria Public Library, 735 Broughton Street (between Douglas and Blanshard). FREE PARKING in the parkade underneath GVPL
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Next meeting: Getting work with the Online Directory of Editors
— Or sell yourself on any other online directory.
Featuring popcorn, video and discussion.
Date: Wednesday, January 17, 2018
Time: 7 to 9 p.m.
Place: Community Room, Central Branch, Greater Victoria Public Library
The meeting will present a half-hour video of a webinar offered by EAC online, followed by discussion. The webinar, originally presented in Dec. 2016, is by Greg Ioannou, Getting work with the Online Directory of Editors. (Or sell yourself on any other online directory.) Greg focuses on how to best craft a directory listing. He outlines the webinar thus:“some people are getting a lot more work from their ODE listing than others are. Why do some people find big-ticket clients or get so much work from the ODE that they're swamped? What's their secret? Is it that they're super experienced, well-known or ... more qualified than YOU? No!
Editors who are successfully using the ODE know how to craft their listings so they bring in more work. There really are "secrets" in this trade, and they aren't always intuitive. In this free webinar, we'll lift the veil on those secrets and show you how to make the most of an ODE listing.”
Discuss.
Enjoy chatting and refreshments. Hot beverages! Maybe lemonade! Biscuits! The best.
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Saturday morning gatherings
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Come down to Ogden Point and join our Saturday coffee get-to-know-you sessions!
Who: PEAVI members and those thinking about becoming members.
Where: Breakwater Cafe
When: Saturdays at 10:30 a.m.
Why: Delicious breakfasts, the best views in town, and excellent company.
Coming? Need a ride? Contact coffee@peavi.ca.
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Member news
New member
Welcome to new member Daniela Herold! We look forward to meeting you at one of the monthly member meetings.
Your news
Do you have news you would like to share, an interesting project, perhaps, or a new job? Has a book you edited recently been published? We would love to hear your editing news.
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Profile series: PEAVI's founding members
Starting off the new year is the third profile in our series featuring PEAVI's founding members. It's another excellent read. Thank you, Yvonne Van Ruskenveld, for sharing.
Yvonne van Ruskenveld
When did you join PEAVI?
Right at the beginning. I had been a member of what was then the Freelance Editors’ Association of Canada (FEAC — now Editors Canada) since becoming a freelancer in Ottawa in 1987. When we moved to Vancouver in 1988, I immediately started attending local FEAC meetings, which brought me not only new friends but work as well. When we moved to Victoria in 1990, I still managed to get to Vancouver for workshops but I missed the collegiality of the regular meetings. I was so pleased when local editors started getting together, at first through FEAC contacts and then as PEAVI.
How did your editing career develop?
I became a full-time freelance editor and writer after working in the federal government in Ottawa for 14 years as a program officer and policy analyst. Since much of my work in government had involved writing and editing, I started with a strong skill set. What I needed was to build my knowledge of the editorial process in a freelance context. Two avenues opened up for me: those FEAC workshops and volunteering. I joined a collective publishing a local feminist journal in Ottawa called Breaking the Silence. The lead editor was a professional freelancer so I learned a lot from her — including basic things such as how to use editing marks.
As a freelance editor and writer, I served a wide range of clients, editing everything from brochures to huge reports, and many textbooks. In 1992, I became a founding member of West Coast Editorial Associates (WCEA), which provided even more opportunities to work on interesting and varied projects. In 2006, I moved in-house as director of publishing for a small educational publishing house. When it closed in 2011, I returned to WCEA until my retirement last year.
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A small sample of the books I've worked on
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What did you enjoy most about editing?
My greatest satisfaction came from substantive editing, especially developmental editing of textbooks. I loved solving the puzzle of a manuscript — how to make it readable, engaging and informative, at the right level for the intended audience, while meeting the publisher’s requirements and those of the relevant ministry of education.
On the people side, earning the appreciation of authors for helping them produce their best work was a tremendous bonus, and working with other editors on team projects was both fun and enormously supportive. In particular, my partners in WCEA made the challenging aspects of editing — gruesome deadlines, sometimes-difficult clients and crushing volumes of work — bearable.
What are you doing now?
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Since retiring at the end of March last year, I’m able to indulge my passion for history. I’m a long-time member of the Old Cemeteries Society of Victoria, a local heritage group. As one of many volunteers, I develop and present walking tours in our weekly public tour program. My main focus is on social history (especially women’s history) but, of course, my editorial colours show in my epitaph tours. I’m also a member of the Victoria Historical Society and the Western Front Association: Pacific Coast Branch (World War I history), and I give talks about local history to community groups.
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Presenting on a walking tour in beautiful Ross Bay Cemetery
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What would you say to an editor at the beginning of a career?
Don’t focus only on developing your editing skills — learn as well about your role in the publishing process, and if you are going to freelance, learn about the business side of your profession. While editing may seem like a vocation, it’s also a job. Joining professional associations such as PEAVI and Editors Canada puts you in touch with other freelancers with whom you can talk about aspects such as setting rates, marketing and networking. While these latter two tasks may not come naturally to many of us, they aren’t as painful as they may seem. Marketing can be as simple as introducing yourself as an editor and explaining what an editor really does (i.e., not just correct grammar and spelling) when you meet someone new. I once got a job from someone I sat beside and chatted to at the opera!
Last, but far from least, don’t undervalue your work. Many of us come to editing because we love words, but that doesn’t mean we should gratefully accept low rates because we are delighted to be paid for doing what we love. We are providing valuable services to our clients — we shouldn’t be shy about promoting ourselves or asking for fair compensation.
Thanks to Lenore Hietkamp for the idea for this profile series and Jean Layland for coordinating.
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Book reviewer
Love to read? We would like to include a monthly book review in Island Editor, so if you would like to review a book you recently read or are currently reading, let us know.
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Annual Christmas party
Thank you Fran Aitkens for hosting another wonderful PEAVI Christmas party!
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Interesting reads
Sally Jennings sent these articles on how language changes over time. Thank you Sally!
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On the lighter side
What's on your birthday wishlist?
Article: Exclusive Books locked a granny in their store for the night ... and she loved every minute of it!
http://bit.ly/2mbZL67
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You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what is burning inside you. And we edit to let the fire show through the smoke. – Arthur Polotnik
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Thank you, Cathy Reed, for sharing.
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Ideas? Content? Feedback?
Do you have content, ideas, or feedback you'd like to share, an idea for a monthly meeting topic or a suggestion for a particular speaker? We're all ears!
Please contact Lynne Graham at communications@peavi.ca.
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Island Editor is coordinated and compiled by Lynne Graham and copyedited by Dave Henry. PEAVI members provide the content.
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