{"id":3004,"date":"2013-08-15T10:16:21","date_gmt":"2013-08-15T14:16:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.old.caraghobrien.com\/book\/?p=3004"},"modified":"2013-08-15T10:31:02","modified_gmt":"2013-08-15T14:31:02","slug":"splitting-wood-writing-and-persistence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/writing\/splitting-wood-writing-and-persistence\/","title":{"rendered":"Splitting Wood, Writing, and Persistence"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"logs\"When I was last in Minnesota, my brother invited me to help with hauling wood logs to cut and split for the fireplace.\u00a0 I was game.\u00a0 Four of us set out together on the job, and at one point, while my older brother manned the chain saw and my younger brother levered out nails with my husband, it fell to me to take a turn splitting logs.<\/p>\n

I was not a natural with an axe.\u00a0 Secretly, I was concerned about chopping my foot off, but I was also certain I could learn to split a log.\u00a0 It was a matter of trying, and of coordinating the head of the axe so it would fall deftly in the pale meat of the wood.\u00a0 So I set a log upright on the ground, adjusted my gloves, hefted the axe, and gave it a go.<\/p>\n

I missed.\u00a0 Several times.\u00a0 The head of the axe buried heavily in the grass and gouged the black earth.\u00a0 I kept at it, adjusting my aim.\u00a0 Each time I nicked it, the log fell over, and I set it up again. The top began to get dents and a few splinters.\u00a0 Laying a second log flat to act as a base, I balanced my log upright upon it and took another whack.\u00a0 My younger brother offered to do it for me.\u00a0 I declined.\u00a0 More advice was given.\u00a0 I kept aiming the axe above the log and whacking downward.\u00a0 Gradually, the wood became mangled and shredded, but the log remained unsplit.\u00a0 I found, once my axe was wedged in the top, that it worked best to lift the log and the axe together to crack them down onto the base. \u00a0At last, fifteen minutes into my effort, the log split in two.<\/p>\n

I am not deluding myself that I\u2019m an expert at splitting logs. \u00a0In fact, after I was done, my older brother and my husband took over and handily split the rest of the logs with one swipe each.\u00a0 I turned to stacking the pieces.\u00a0 I had, however, unknowingly earned my younger brother\u2019s admiration.\u00a0 He told me he was surprised by the way I had kept at it and impressed by my determination.\u00a0 He said, laughing, that I beat that log because I was a writer.<\/p>\n

Until then, I hadn\u2019t thought about how persistence in one single-minded task might be connected to long-term persistence, or that one type of persistence might be training for the other.\u00a0 I am now hoping, however, that my triumph with the log is evidence that I\u2019ll find my way with my writing.\u00a0 I am entering the seventh draft of this novel, a layered riddle of a story that I\u2019ve been working on for a year and a half.\u00a0 My editor\u2019s latest letter has pointed up a handful of significant problems that I have not managed to fix, despite my efforts, so I’m far from finished.<\/p>\n

I wish I knew how to untangle my story problems, and I wish I knew that the outcome would be worth my toil.\u00a0 But I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 I can only keep working and hope I\u2019ll get there, with something to burn at the end.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was last in Minnesota, my brother invited me to help with hauling wood logs to cut and split for the fireplace.\u00a0 I was game.\u00a0 Four of us set out together on the job, and at one point, while my older brother manned the chain saw and my younger brother levered out nails with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[246,326],"class_list":["post-3004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-project-next","tag-revising"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3004"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3008,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3004\/revisions\/3008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}