That panicky feeling before a story publishes

Funny how we all write to be read, but when we realize just how many eyes will be on our work, we get nervous. It's horrifying to an extent.

One of my first nationally published pieces was in a big sports magazine, and I was sweating the whole first week it was on stands. The man I interviewed, a great coach and better person, was looking forward to reading the published piece, and I didn't realize how many liberties the mag editors would take with quotes. I came from a newspaper environment where words are printed as close to verbatim as possible, and was working with a magazine where cleaning quotes for space and ease was expected.

Either way, he loved it and understood completely. His words weren't twisted to imply anything he didn't mean, so he chose to dwell on his happiness over the feature. It still leaves a little knot in my stomach, though, when I see my articles with quotes not printed exactly as told.

 

I had one of these. As soon as it hit the web my phone started blowing up with people wanting to talk about what I'd written. I knew what I had written was right but I also knew it was controversial enough that I might be attacked. A veteran on my beat told my boss I'd done a good job on it, so that made me feel better. Then when other writers started confirming what I'd written with their own sources and advancing to ball further I felt a little more at ease.

 

Whenever I write something that is going to be a big deal/controversial, I sometimes find myself waking up in the middle of the night -- well, morning in my case -- mentally thinking back to each sentence and wondering if there is something I could have phrased differently, or something that was wrong.

Also, every time I have had a typo, it has been without fail that I woke up in the middle of the night and realized something was wrong, but by that time it was far too late to change it. Weird how you can re-read something three times and not see something, but in the middle of your sleep it pops into your head.

 

Will the fun ever end?

The latest? Cohort is threatening legal action.

Can't wait to see what tomorrow brings.