Confession is good for the soul, mind and perhaps a good laugh

A writer who is his own editor has a fool for an editor. That is a play, of course, off the old saying a man who is his own lawyer has for his client. That being said, some writers find themselves sometimes stuck with an someone who is both an editor and a fool. Nevertheless, someone who writes can always use an extra pair of eyes and a brain provided those eyes and brain are encased inside a being that is neither a fool, nor a lawyer. That is just a joke. I’ve found attorneys who were much more useful at times than an editor, especially if one is writing about something that could potentially lead to litigation.

I think I lost my point, but that is really okay because the aforementioned will be published shortly without the assistance of an editor. I can only hope that once I do self-editing, which often is done more than once after one of my blog posts are posted, that nothing I have written comes across like that now famous post by blogger Amanda Hess.

The fame Hess now possesses is actually more because of a correction that what she wrote on a blog recently:

“This blog post originally stated that one in three black men who have sex with me is HIV positive. In fact, the statistic applies to black men who have sex with men. Also, the photo caption incorrectly attributed Bayard Rustin’s photo to “Wikipedia Commons.” The correct title is “Wikimedia Commons.”

Hess was trying to make a serious point but, holy smokes Bullwinkle!

As  mind-blowing as the correction may be, you have to hand it to Hess for getting her post right even though it has now in post-Twitter-dom been labeled as the “correction heard around the world.” Hess apparently has editing at times although this was not one of those, thankfully. Just think about being an editor who let that little gem slip by!

Not everything that is published on this blog is 100 percent absolutely correct just as not every utterance from every person’s lips is not 100 percent correct. I speak of those matters both factual and mechanical. I sometimes apologize for “editing on the air” or editing after my blog has been published. That happens several times quite frequently after writing something. I understand the impression that mistakes leave, but like Amanda Hess, those mistakes are  human. I have even made mistakes writing while actually concentrating on a word or concept. But as my hero Forrest Gump once said: “It happens.”

Much is to be learned from the Amanda Hess correction though I think the moral of the story is yet to be written. So far be it from me to write it. Adios! If something needs correcting, well, I will probably correct it.