Friday, May 19, 2006
When things don't go quite right
Not everything goes perfectly with a writing project. And sometimes those problems are caused by factors that are out of your hands. I learned this recently, and while the trouble wasn’t catastrophic it did require a bit of extra work from both me and my editor.
I write a lot about the Web and Web-based applications. Being the Web, things can change quite quickly. The article in question looked at several hosted wikis. The project went smoothly, and I handed the finished article off to my editor. Last week, I got the edits back – they were minimal. But there was a note in the manuscript stating that one of the wikis had gone offline. I checked it out, and the domain for that wiki was parked. I tried contacting the developer, but no luck.
To make a long story short, I quickly reviewed another similar wiki. It was a couple of hours of work on my part, but I was able to use some of the same wording from the old section of the article.
I was fortunate in that I had an understanding editor and a topic that enabled me to quickly come up with a substitute site. Otherwise, I could have been in trouble.
I write a lot about the Web and Web-based applications. Being the Web, things can change quite quickly. The article in question looked at several hosted wikis. The project went smoothly, and I handed the finished article off to my editor. Last week, I got the edits back – they were minimal. But there was a note in the manuscript stating that one of the wikis had gone offline. I checked it out, and the domain for that wiki was parked. I tried contacting the developer, but no luck.
To make a long story short, I quickly reviewed another similar wiki. It was a couple of hours of work on my part, but I was able to use some of the same wording from the old section of the article.
I was fortunate in that I had an understanding editor and a topic that enabled me to quickly come up with a substitute site. Otherwise, I could have been in trouble.
