I'm proud and honored and flattered, of course. Especially with the former piece. But I'm also a little disappointed with the latter. It's hard to see your life in print when the details of your life aren't reflected accurately.The thing is, a fact checker emailed me an excerpt with my quotes, asked me if it was accurate, and I emailed her back accurate information. And they still misprinted the information.
On the one hand, it's not that critical to get the facts straight -- so I have three children, not two, nobody will be hurt by that error. On the other hand, the TRAM flap surgery is one that must be completely understood before agreeing to it, and calling it a trans flap is downright mis informative. Not to mention a double mastectomy with said TRAM flap reconstruction would be an extreme surgery for someone with a diagnosis of DCIS and no family history to speak of. But after a recurrence of breast cancer, a recurrence of invasive cancer no less, a more advanced stage than the first time ... well, that's a different story altogether.
I'm just shocked the facts were overlooked in a magazine dedicated to breast cancer.
Anyway, as a writer, I take away this message: never again will I allow myself to overlook the details during my interviews. If I have to go over things again and again until I get them right, I will.
If you're a writer, you should to0.
- Always double check your facts.
- Never underestimate the importance of details.
- Make sure changes are made when incorrect information is clarified.
2 comments:
"If you're a writer, you should to." Girl, you got a typo! No biggie; blogs should be casual; if we proofread everything we'd have no time to actually blog.
I'm enjoying your blog and just added it to my folder of local blogs; I blog out of Stamford!
I am amazed such reputable magazines made those mistakes. Did you let them know so they could make a correction and/or speak to the person who made the mistake?
Wow, took me a while to find this comment, I wasn't alerted to it (humph)! But thank you for pointing this out -- never too late to fix a typo.
I did point it out and the editor called me and left an apologetic message -- I didn't call back because there was nothing more to say, what was done was done. I'm not sure there will be another issue -- so it isn't like they can recant.
Ah well ... the best thing we can do is learn from the mistake.
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