Writers and Editors

Mar 20, 2012 11:21 PM EDT

Pat, Could you add an RSS widget to your blog so that readers can have it fed into their iGoogle pages? I can't find one, or an email subscription widget either, and it's hard to remember to come back to a web page . . .

- Richard Gilbert

Mar 21, 2012 9:05 AM EDT

I'll see if I can figure out how to do so, Richard.So much to do, so little time!

- Pat McNees

Mar 23, 2012 4:32 AM EDT

Pat, it's not hard! You just have to find the little striped icon and enable it. If you can't, ask any kid or grad student who blogs and they can set it up in three seconds.(Pat responds: I did something. I'm not sure if it's a widget.)

- Richard Gilbert

Mar 10, 2012 6:30 AM EST

I just rediscovered your blog and am really glad. Thanks so much for featuring this video! It is delightful and wise.

- Richard Gilbert

Mar 11, 2012 4:21 PM EDT

I could lose hours listening to those TED talks but this one particularly seemed worth mentioning.-- Pat

- Pat McNees

Feb 27, 2012 3:24 PM EST

More on the same subject:The Fact-Checker Versus the Fabulist (Gideon Lewis-Kraus, 2-21-12) and Writer vs. Fact-Checker: This Time, It’s Personal (The 6th Floor blog, Eavesdropping on the Times Magazine 2-22-12)D'Agata teaches nonfiction writing at the University of Iowa Creative Writing Program.

- PM

Mar 10, 2012 6:35 AM EST

I have written about this issue on my own blog, and, guiltily, less tolerantly than you. As you note, About a Mountain "blends his reporting and storytelling," and there's a lot of reporting, giving the impression that it is factual, and it mostly is. But he does weird things that are unnecessary in my view, as if to make a point. But I don't get the point, unfortunately. Maybe because I was a reporter. I am not a stickler, since his admitted composite characters and events in the service of good storytelling don't bother me. Some things do.

- Richard Gilbert

Mar 12, 2012 9:38 AM EDT

An interesting follow-up piece: What Do Fact-Checkers and Anesthesiologists Have in Common? (David Zweig, The Atlantic, 3-1-12). Understanding why some people choose professions where accomplishments go unheralded. Here's a sample: "IN A CULTURE that favors sensation, the fact checker is an anomaly, perhaps even anathema. He is the brakes on editors and writers racing toward deadline intent on dazzling readers at the expense of edifying them. He is the schoolmarm tsk tsking. He is the public defender for the unrepresented, the downtrodden, the forgotten—the facts." An excellent description of this important position follows, and more broadly is linked with other "Invisibles," who get public notice generally only when things go wrong: anesthesiologists ("they share the same fastidiousness, inner pride of their work, and joy of behind-the-scenes power"), piano tuners (imagine good concerts without them, but do they take a bow?), and graphic designers ("great design often shouldn't call attention to itself").

- Pat McNees