Writing is hard and thankless work.
I have found this to be particularly true if you're doing what I do, which is act as a quasi-reporter/journalist. I interview people or attend meetings. I write up the interviews and the meetings.
I try to be creative about it. I enjoy it for rewards other than monetary (thank goodness) including but not limited to the opportunity to meet people I would not otherwise meet.
We recently completed our annual "profile" work. This is a major endeavor composed of features from all over the county. It takes some hustling to get this done.
I received one enthusiastic thank you out of my 10 interview subjects, and I was happy to get that. Usually I don't hear anything at all, and I'm left wondering how someone liked a story. Sometimes I hear through the grapevine what they thought or didn't think.
Of course, if there is something wrong with the article, I will hear about it. Errors always prompt the subject matter to get in touch.
Yesterday I received a phone call from another interview subject. Nice article, but there was a grammatical error.
"I don't speak in double negatives," my interviewee said. I had quoted her as saying "not nothing." and this was what she took away from the article, which was 1200 words long.
She did not recall that I had called her lots of nice words and made her sound like someone everyone would want to know. Nope. It was the double negative that caught her eye.
Sigh.
I apologized for my error, because of course I must have written something down wrong.
"I'll never hear the end of it," she said.
"Has anyone said anything to you yet? It's been nearly a week since the paper hit the stands," I politely asked.
No one had mentioned it, but nevertheless, there it stood. A flaw in the face of flawlessness.
And I'd do it all over again, because I really do love my work. Even the double negatives.
I hear ya sister! I actually tape all my interviews then transcribe them. It takes much longer to do it this way but I'm more comfortable with it. By the time I finish interviewing someone I can usually tell who will have the class to comment and who won't. It boggles my mind how the tiniest mistake (no, we're not perfect) can set someone off, especially when you're taking the time to show them in a good light, or promote their cause, for free. It's all good though...there's many more class act people who make it all worthwhile. And they're why we don't do it for the money...
ReplyDeleteI tape meetings and sometimes interviews, but my profit margin would be below zero if I took the time to transcribe every hour-long interview word for word. Still, the tapes are good to have in instances like this, when I could have gone back and said "see, you did say that." I will probably have to start using the tape recorder more.
ReplyDeleteYup, I spend more time on transcribing than anything else. Wouldn't it be nice if we could just pop the mini cassette in the PC and have it transcribe it for us. Hey, someone should invent that!
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