Excuses: Fear of Error

Still sick; still stayed at home today. Thought I would go to work, but got up at 7:00 AM to a huge coughing spell, deep and painful. So I crawled back in bed and slept till 10, and got up to a leisurely day. Did a little reading, but mainly slept and slept, or at least rested. I think I'll be back to work tomorrow.

Now to the next excuse I've experienced: fear of error. This came to me when I was writing a Documenting America column on a document that dealt with "common law". I had no idea what that was. An hour of research both on-line and in books I had at hand gave me the basics--at least enough to write the column and make the points I wanted to. Four hours total, and I had a column. Yet, a nagging thought kept coming back to me: What if my research is not sufficient, and I've made an error. It would kill my credibility, and would kill the column. I thought that through as I wrote the column, and tried to structure what I wrote to avoid error, to indicate the limit of my knowledge. Still, the nagging thought remained.

The writer's need to research his subject, and write what is correct and verifiable, is huge. This is true for fiction, non-fiction, magazines, newspapters. Make a mistake on a fact and you're toast. Worse than that, though, I think, would be a mistake in an opinion, or in interpreting a fact. You might say it would be impossible to make a mistake of interpretation or opinion, but I think it is possible.

I had more I wanted to write about this, but the long day, even with the rest I had, is making my head go fuzzy. I'll edit this tomorrow and add the rest.