In today’s Pilot we featured a Costa Mesa lawyer who is one of 20 finalists in American Idol’s songwriting competition. You might have noticed near the end of the article that Perry Smith joked that his wife Elizabeth hates country music, his preferred genre for songwriting. “Any time I start playing she puts her iPod on and puts her earphones in,” he said.

I thought it was an amusing anecdote when I first edited it so I was surprised when Perry contacted us this morning wondering if maybe we could tweak how that was worded in the online version of the story since it was too late to change the print version. I told him we couldn’t do that but he could write a letter to the editor, which he did. It’ll be in Tuesday’s paper. It would be nice if we could do what Perry suggested, but if we allowed editing like that after the fact there’d be no end of it.

But I understood where Perry was coming from and wanted to follow up with him. It’s odd how some folks can have such different reactions to the printed word. And it’s also interesting how something that sounds just fine when you’re saying it looks awfully different in print.

But don’t worry about Perry. No, his wife hasn’t thrown a bread roller at him and, no, he hasn’t been sentenced to the couch for a week. In fact, she tried to talk him out of writing the letter to the editor because she thought the whole thing was funny and didn’t take offense to it at all. Perry just wanted to make sure everyone knows how much he loves Elizabeth.

In fact, she bought the guitar that he’s pictured with on the Pilot’s Monday front page. It was a birthday present — Perry turned 37 April 11.

“She knows I say that all the time about how she hates country music,” Perry said. “I just wanted everyone to know that she’s also supportive of my writing and got me the guitar.”

He also jests that it’s possible she seeks an aural sanctuary when he gets to songwriting because of his voice. There’s a reason he’s not trying to be in front of the camera on Idol and is trying to win the behind-the-scenes competition, he jokes.

We’re really rooting for him. If he wins it’s a great follow-up story. It’s already a great story. Here’s a guy who just started seriously songwriting about seven months ago and is in a major national contest.

By the way, the song he has in the competition was initially written as a quiet country song, but he amped it up into a big rock power ballad because he figured it would work better on Idol. He’s probably right.

You can still vote for his song, “You Believed in Me.” The deadline is Wednesday. Find the link to vote at Perry’s site at www.perrysmith.com.

By the way, if you have any questions for me, e-mail me at paul.anderson@latimes.com. It’d be fun to answer your questions on the blog.

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