I covered the qTpoc meeting in the LGBTQ Resource Center in Columbia, Mo. on Monday, Nov. 10, 2014. The talk was interesting, but I spent way too much time on interviews while covering the event.
So mobile assignments on deadline are pretty stressful. My last post, significantly different in layout from my usual posts, was published entirely from my phone. All of the content was gathered and posted in under two hours.
Going in, I thought it would be a piece of cake. I’ve written on deadline before, and covered topics that are way more stressful than an LGBTQ discussion group. What I forgot was that I’m a perfectionist. I always feel like I need more background information before I can publish anything, lest I misunderstand something fundamental about the story and have it show in my writing. For an in-depth piece, this is a blessing. For an under 200-word blog post, this is a curse. I interviewed more than one person at the event, which was completely unnecessary. I also tried to talk to the speaker, which I had no time for because I’d already interviewed two people who attended the event. My biggest mistake came from asking a person who worked at the LGBTQ Resource Center a couple questions for clarification. Never engage someone who is passionate about a cause unless you want to be lectured for a while. Most of the information he gave me was helpful, but a solid seven minutes out of the ten minute lecture were really irrelevant to what I was doing. But I couldn’t cut him off, because he was talking to me as a favor. And because he didn’t breathe between sentences.
By the time I’d blundered through my interviews and gotten a lecture from Resource Center personnel, I had about 20 minutes to get my content online. Fine. I know how to write a lead and add a quote. But no matter what I did, the WordPress app refused to let me caption my photos. I pressed every damn button in the thing, and it gave me no other options but to post photos without captions. So I cut the deadline pretty close and had to omit photo explanations, and to top it off I totally forgot to tweet my post out for extra points. Come on, Jackie.
Jackie Olson 
Jackie,
Don’t beat yourself up so much! I’m a perfectionist too so I understand your frustrations, but this was a learning experience! Mistakes are expected and how to divide your time is one of the hardest things to master when it comes to deadline assignments, especially those that involve the use of technology!
You had great information and crafted a good story-the only thing really missing were the captions. It is too bad you forgot to tweet the link, but lesson learned for next time!
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