Several Kingston Twiggers added “garganelli” to their vocabularies. And their stomachs.
The Editors Kingston holiday social on December 14 was a great success. Fourteen twig members and guests gathered in the back room at cozy family-owned Olivea, where a great deal of pasta and wine were consumed and laughter rang out all evening. (People who think editor parties are staid affairs have never partied with editors.)
Some walked from homes just a few blocks away in downtown Kingston; others drove in from up to 100 km away — Belleville, Picton, Erin….
As a “twig” (small local group) of the Editors’ Association of Canada, the most important things Editors Kingston does is help editors… associate.
Elizabeth is a better twig coordinator than photographer. Does anyone have a better photo from this evening that we could sub in here?
Twenty-sixteen was a great year for the twig, with well-attended meetings or socials every month, a great “Authors Talk Editing” event, and lots of members connecting in other ways, from chatting on our Facebook page to recommending one another for jobs. The official membership grew by two, from 12 to 14 (that’s over 16%!), and over a dozen new faces turned out for a meeting or two. As Editors Canada continues to improve its services and its marketing, we expect both those numbers to keep growing.
Here’s to a happy, prosperous — and correctly punctuated — 2017 for all.
Coming Up Next: Self-Publishing
Panel with three great guests sharing their expertise:
- Stacey Atkinson, an Ottawa-based editor and novelist, and the author of the online course How to Self-Publish a Book
- Carla Douglas, a Kingston editor and the author of more than 10 books, most recently the self-published You’ve Got Style: A Writer’s Guide to Copyediting
- Bob MacKenzie, a Kingston poet, novelist, and editor, and the creator of Dark Matter Press
If you’re curious about this growing field for editors, come learn more, such as how to find self-publishing authors, how to guide them through the stages of editing and publishing, and where to turn for the best resources. If you’re an experienced self-publisher, come hear how your colleagues’ experiences compare with your own, and join in the conversation!
Ongwanada Resource Centre, 191 Portsmouth Avenue
7 to 9 p.m (doors open at 6:30)
Free
Celebrate the dark season an informal pay-as-you-go meal in the private room at 
“You can’t just walk up and pet a sheep, you know,” Alex Schultz said with a smile. “Madeleine was obviously very much a city girl, but I happen to know a thing or two about sheep—and you just can’t do that. They’re skittish.” Laughter circled the room. Alex was talking about a scene he had to change while copyediting Madeleine Thien’s first novel, Certainty. “When you’re editing, you end up having the most ludicrous conversations sometimes. It can take you anywhere.”
Learning to be an editor takes hard work, and sometimes brings dispiriting criticism. Jane Urquhart’s 1993 release, Away, which Alex copyedited, brought some to his lap. Alex said the book’s review in The Globe and Mail shone brightly on the book itself, but included the comment that it was too bad such a good book had been poorly copyedited. To her eternal credit, Urquhart came to his defence, writing a letter to the Globe in which she praised his work and insisted that each of the three specific “errors” the reviewer had criticized was in fact an authorial choice. “It was a crazy and amazing time—a rocky beginning. But it was a beginning,” he recounted.
During his first year at McClelland & Stewart, Alex worked on M.G. Vassanji’s The Book of Secrets, winner of the 1994 Giller Prize. He called those early times with M&S his editing education: “You got to study editing at the elbow of senior editors in those days. You can’t do that anymore.” I think that’s a bit sad, really—that gone are the days of apprenticing with senior editors in the beast’s belly. But Alex’s tales from the trenches were nevertheless an inspiration.
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