If you want something done...

well you know the rest.. I'm not idle as you know and I suppose I wanted to take a moment to say why I've not written up  this blog quite as often as I might have recently

Our clergy team are responsible for 7 churches in the 7 little (and some even littler) villages around here. Until now and for historical reasons there have been 2 parish magazines. Divided in to one for 4 churches and one for the remaining 3.

The larger magazine of the two has been edited by the same (brave) lady for over 35 years and understandably she'd like to retire now.... Its a subscription only magazine at the princely sum of 40p and has a print run of about 150.

The smaller magazine is printed and edited by local businessmen and distributed freely through the 3 villages it serves.

You know that it makes sense to combine them in to one magazine. A bigger magazine is planned; more advertising to fund it, more pages of church and  community information.  A combination of all the best bits of the two old magazines and space for new ideas and features. And it is to be free to everyone. Now the print run will be over 900.

You know what's coming next don't you? Our Irish vicar has the gift of persuasion and so he rung me early one Saturday morning and I found myself agreeing to edit this new magazine and chair the whole re-creation process. What have I let myself in for or even do I have the skills for this? Daunted.. (yes I know most people put 'undaunted' here but I'm truthful - I was daunted...) but determined to sort this project out. It made sense and would be a challenge.

Its a lot of work! Since September when we started this process we've come up with a new name for the magazine, engaged a graphic designer ( a dear friend of mine) to design a new cover and we've got new advertisers on board with adverts all set up -talk about a crash course in Microsoft Publisher. Well that's kept me quite for many an afternoon.

The first issue is due out Feb 2012 and there are hurdles to jump still in terms of sorting out distribution and delivery once these 900 odd magazines get back to the villages. I've got templates and style guides to sort so that the overall look of the magazine is fresh, clear and interesting.

Once all these things are ticked off I shall be sat in the editors chair each month collating and sorting all the contributions, ideas and adverts for community and church events in to one useful and recognisable church magazine.

You can therefore understand that by the time I've spent an afternoon firing off emails left, right and centre,  designing adverts and invoices plus writing letters to get more people on board this project, then the last thing I need  to do is more writing! But we'll get there - of that I'm sure and once the magazine is up and running then hopefully it'll become a seamless part of my life here and hopefully of the community to which it serves

And on that note I'm now  going back to my knitting - it's not concerned with text boxes and clip art