Hello everyone… especially those of you with ideas and a pen,
Have you had something on your mind that you’d like to share in the upcoming winter edition of Contact? If you didn’t know, Contact is ICA’s quarterly (and primary) publication for the Illinois professional counseling community with a yearly distribution of nearly 12,000 statewide.
We are interested in hearing from the widest range of our members, be they students, counselor educators or professional counselors. After all, we are at our best when we are learning from one another. So no matter who you are, send us your articles. We’re glad to work with you so your piece shines the way you’d want it to. Don’t worry, we won’t write your article for you and we won’t take your ideas out of your hands, but we’ll provide feedback and suggestions to produce a publication that we’ll all be proud of.
We have many seasoned writers and numerous budding authors and would-be authors with great ideas and insights. We’re always interested in publishing valuable division and chapter news, but we also seek to publish a balance of personal views and experience from the clinic, thoughts and ideas about new treatment approaches, insights into the challenges of agency and private practice, educational opportunities and methods, and emerging regulatory, social and economic trends impacting the counseling profession.
As you might see, there are many exciting and interesting opportunities to contribute. Our door is open and we’d love to hear from you.
The deadline for submitting articles for the winter edition of Contact is November 15. Our rules are pretty simple (see below) so don’t wait to get started. Please send your articles, questions and comments to: ICAContacEditor@gmail.com.
Thanks!
Your Contact Co-Editors,
Kim Duris, EdD, LCPC and Kevin Stouffer, PhD, LCPC
Here are the submission rules:
1. All articles are to be typed in Times New Roman 12pt font
2. Articles should be no more than 1000 words in length, not including title and biography.
4. If you don’t use Microsoft Word, send it as an RTF (rich text format) file. Most word processors handle this format.
5. Include photo(s) and a short biography (about 30 words) about the author(s).
6. Any photos submitted with your article, including the bio photo, should be as high quality as possible, at least 300 dpi. Low quality photos, such as might be used on the internet, are too grainy for print. In addition you must have the legal right to use the photo.
7. By submitting your article you are agreeing to have it edited by the Contact editors. This can include changes to length, content, grammar, punctuation, etc.
8. All authors will be notified via email if their submission is chosen with an attachment of the edited version that will be published.
9. All authors will be notified via email if their article was not chosen
10. Late submissions cannot be accepted for consideration in the pending issue. However, we invite article submissions of a non-timely nature at any time for consideration in the next issue.
Here are a few writing guidelines
· Focus: What are you trying to get across to the reader? What are your main points?
· Hook: Tell the reader in the first paragraph why we need to read this article. Tell us why the topic is important to you.
· Composition: Standard grammar, usage, and punctuation are important.
· Style is less formal than you would use for a school paper or professional journal but more formal than email, everyday writing, or blogging. You may speak from first person, if you choose.
· Attribution is good, as in “John Gottman wrote .…” Footnotes and bibliography are not needed and won’t be included due to space limitations.
· Wrap your article up with a suggestion or two about how your reader can apply what you have said to their counseling work.
