Finding a Voice

I'm trying my hand as publications editor for CACSD (Canadian Association for Christians in Student Development. www.cacsdhome.com): website, ebulletin, bi-annual journal. The learning curve is steeper than anticipated and I'm behind on the journal deadline by more than a month. The content is almost ready, but the graphic designer won't be able to get at it until at least January 4th. Sigh.

Even so, the challenge is enjoyable. Editing can a very nurturing process -- developing both messages, audience, and fledgling writers. Nurturing is not merely sentiment, it is also discipline: the discipline that cuts out extraneous material and finds the essential article.

Courage utterly opposes the bold hope that this is such fine stuff the work needs it, or the world. Courage, exhausted, stands on bare reality: this writing weakens the work. You must demolish the work and start over. You can save some of the sentences, like bricks. It will be a miracle if you can save some of the paragraphs, no matter how excellent in themselves or hard-won. You can waste a year worrying about it, or you can get it over with now. (Are you a woman, or a mouse?)

~ Annie Dillard, The Writing Life, quote on Beyond Magazine's website.

Then there's the discipline that solicits material and meets deadlines. Hopefully I'll get to do this at least 2 years in order to find my rhythm in it.