Mitt Romney wants to be persident

Maybe this week’s typo in Romney’s phone app has something to do with his Michigan roots, as that’s where today’s photo was taken.

It's been a full week

And I mean that in the sense of fullness -- as in the previous posting with that glass full of ocean and sky.

It felt like an honour to be part of the first annual Winter Writer's Retreat on Denman Island. Although really, the weather felt much more like spring than winter.

I was with a group of writers who wanted to learn more about shaping their work into publishable manuscripts.

Their works-in-progress ranged from history to historical novel, from taut political intrigue to a manual that will help communities become energy self-sufficient. One of the projects will be a coffee-table book that combines photos and writings on a very specific area of Vancouver Island. There will even be a book on achieving spiritual enlightenment; its message is tempered with wonderfully clear-eyed humour.

I just hope that all the participants will maintain the kind of energy they put into the workshop's activities. For now, the house where we worked holds some good energy, and I'm sure it will lend itself to many other creative ventures.

Punktuation Rules!

Okay, so I'm kind of a nerd. But was yesterday ever fun - I was in a whole roomful of like-minded nerds.

The occasion was a seminar sponsored by our local branch of the Editors' Association of Canada. Led by Frances Peck, we spent the day considering (and arguing about) punctuation and mechanics. If I've already lost you, you're probably not an editor. But if you are still with me, consider some of the wonderful things Frances said.

She reminded us that punctuation marks help us navigate our way through sentences, indicating pauses and also helping us make connections. She used phrases like "maintaining syntactical interest" and employed beautiful words like "idiosyncratic" - and best of all, she offered the important-to-any-editor caution that hyphens might drive us mad, describing those small black marks as "the mosquitoes of punctuation."

Goofy-sounding to a non-editor? Probably. But did I learn a lot? You bet!

Why would anyone hire an editor?

You know how to write. You've been doing it since you were little. So why would you need some fancy-schmancy editor?

Imagine what might happen if you gave yourself a haircut. Sure, your hair would be shorter. It might not even look too bad, especially if you can ignore the back of your head. But after a day or so, you realize the haircut isn't quite the look you'd wanted. You probably end up going to a hairdresser to get it fixed.

Hiring an editor is something like going to the hairdresser to get the haircut repaired.

You've written a piece that you think is pretty good. You might even have thought about trying to get it published. Then someone suggests you send it to an editor. But why would you do that? Won't an editor change your precious words? Won't they make it into something that's no longer yours?

Just as the hairdresser who's fixing your haircut probably won't suggest purple dye to camouflage the messy cut, an editor's job isn't so much to change your work as to enhance it.

Sure, an editor can find mistakes in your work and help you fix them. But an editor can also point out spots where your meaning isn't clear, where you need to give your reader more (or less) information, where you're writing in generalizations, or too arcanely. [Ed's note: arcane refers to secret or inside information. Could you use a less obscure word here?]

Don't be afraid to explore the idea of hiring an editor. Especially if your words are venturing out into the realm of publication, you'll want your work [Ed: and your hair] looking as good as possible.