What Are Facts?

Have you ever heard the story about how AARP got started?

Here's a recap. https://states.aarp.org/chicken-coop-unlikely-birthplace-aarp/

One night, about a decade ago, I was having an enjoyable dinner out with another insurance executive. He was the founder of several large insurance organizations including two large reinsurance companies. He was a serious-minded person who had a solid reputation.

We got to that part of the evening when we were done with our business and had settled in to tell war stories.

He topped anything I could offer by telling me of several friends of his who started AARP.

According to him, the fable about the elderly teacher living in a chicken coop is pure malarkey. Supposedly, his friends needed a "group" to peddle a health product so they invented one - retired people. They romanticized the group by creating the legend of the school teacher.

I don't know if what he told me was true but I have worked closely with AARP and would believe that they're capable of just about anything that will allow them to sell more products.

I tell this story because I watch authors on this site struggling to get their "facts" straight.

Facts are funny things. Just tell a good story and give it your best effort. If you need an old lady living in a chicken coop to make the story flow, so be it. It's fiction. We're not reporters and aren't bound by journalistic standards.

Several years ago I wrote a story called Baseball Annie. Erin is selling it on Amazon. It's a good yarn. Yet - when it was first posted someone ripped me from first to third for what he thought were atrocious errors. His comments knocked me for a loop. I'm a ball fan but apparently not a big enough fan to know all the trivia that he did. I almost hung up my spikes because I wasn't a good enough writer to get my "facts" straight.

That would have been a shame because I had a lot of fun writing the next 95 stories.

When someone rips you in a comment for some trivial detail you got "wrong" don't overreact -- there are a lot of people who know "for sure" that AARP was started due to the trials of a retired teacher.

Jill