Learning by Mistaking [Frankie Says…] Apr05

Learning by Mistaking [Frankie Says…]

Frankie Says… Triple check everything before you send it to the editor. By day I’m a writer. By night… I’m a producer. Actually that’s not entirely true. Yes, I’m a writer and yes, I’m a producer, but that first sentence just sounded cool so I wanted to write it that way. Day and night, I’m pretty much doing both all the time. I didn’t go to school for either profession, but serendipitously I have found myself quite happy in my career choices, although it took a while to get here. But having not gone to school there are situations I have come across, and continue to come across still, where I am just completely ill-equipped to be handling these said situations. Take for instance, my recent article publishing on a high profile website. The editor said she loved the story – great news. It was on the front page of the site – great news. Twenty minutes after the story goes up I get an email from a producer on the film I was writing about saying I spelled the title wrong – shit news. I scramble and email my editor, apologizing profusely. She changes it accordingly, but says that she is ‘dismayed’ at how a journalist could get something like that incorrect. Dismayed. Ouch. That had the same sting as when, at age 12, you are told by a parent that they aren’t mad at you, just disappointed. It’s a searing sentence that sits in your stomach. You know you’re not just bad, but stupid too. In my opinion stupid is worse than being bad. At least bad has a motivation behind it, usually. Stupid is just, well, stupid. No forethought goes into stupid. So here I was, with my pants down, begging...