Learning the hard way...

Tracy Pfeiffer, 4804

This week has been something of a whirlwind of hard-learned lessons about story focus and contacting sources. We knew that our initial pitch for this story was rather vague, but received good advice on ways to focus it and make it into something people would be interested in reading. However, we found it difficult to locate the character that we needed, and I'm still unsure of how the character we did find will play into the greater story. I see it, and I can sense it right over the horizon, but I just can't link them together in my mind in such a way that won't leave the question, "Why should people care?"

I've also learned a lot really quickly about the persistence necessary to contact sources. My attempts to contact sources on Monday were admittedly too subdued, and my teammate and I have found ourselves scrambling to find replacement sources for the ones who wouldn't contact us back and I did not give up on soon enough. Lesson learned, for sure.