> Under those conditions, you tend to write incredibly embarrassing lines such as "The buried treasure of this island is not gold and jewels, but the hearts and smiles of its people, in a delightful country where the welcome is as warm as the water" and not mention how there were cockroaches the size of hamsters in the motel room.

Apparently in some cases you can get out of writing such lines and merely settle for being attributed with them. My article, as published in Dive Magazine, looked more like my own work than I was expecting, but I noticed that all mention of eels in the cave water was excised, and one line in particular was altered enough that when I read the article, I thought to myself, this does not sound like me. Sure enough, it wasn't.

My line was:

"There's no way this kind of thing could be done in the United States. The first time someone twisted an ankle or got cut on a sharp rock edge, there would be a skillion dollar lawsuit. And it wasn't like they went to the other extreme, putting us in truly dangerous situations or not preparing us with the proper equipment or surveying us ahead of time in case anyone had any problems with claustrophobia or related health issues that would interfere with a safe trip through."

Their line was:

"There's no way this kind of thing could be done in the USA. The first time someone twisted an ankle there would be a skillion-dollar lawsuit. But it wasn't as if we were put in truly dangerous situations; our very competent guides prepared us well, with the proper equipment, and made sure nobody had any problems with a safe trip."

Not actually a big change, not something I'd even think to be bothered about, not embarrassing like calling smiles buried treasure, and actually I think it's an improvement on the quality of the writing even if it has a little less personality. I just thought it was interesting to see that 90% of the changes they made to my report of the trip sell the place better than my original text. Very, very interesting.