{"id":3125,"date":"2013-11-18T20:31:17","date_gmt":"2013-11-19T01:31:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.old.caraghobrien.com\/book\/?p=3125"},"modified":"2013-11-18T20:39:58","modified_gmt":"2013-11-19T01:39:58","slug":"the-night-tipping-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/writing\/the-night-tipping-point\/","title":{"rendered":"The Night Tipping Point"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_3126\" style=\"width: 202px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3126\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-3126\" alt=\"Moon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/Moon-192x300.jpg\" width=\"192\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/Moon-192x300.jpg 192w, https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/Moon.jpg 200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 192px) 100vw, 192px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-3126\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Moon<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Her brain is fried, and she\u2019s been sitting in the same chair for hours and hours.\u00a0 The house is quiet, it\u2019s late, and the responsible adult in her tells her she ought to quit writing and go to bed. \u00a0But she doesn\u2019t.\u00a0 She hangs on, rereading sentences, pondering words, taking a long time to make small decisions and knowing as she labors that she\u2019ll unravel the decisions in the morning at a stroke.\u00a0 In time, she starts to type with her eyes closed, so she can see the scene better, but she needs her eyes open enough to see the letters on the screen, so she squints and slow-blinks at them, like someone in a trance.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019ll be just as bad once she puts the computer aside and shuffles to bed, because though the novel will be left behind sulking, a pad of paper will be within reach, and she\u2019ll keep the light on, muddling over titles, as if the brilliant idea that has eluded her for months will hit her just as she\u2019s letting go.<\/p>\n<p>Then, even if she can reach the light switch and release the pen, she\u2019ll be too tired to go to sleep.\u00a0 The novel will bumble around in her dumb brain for hours, deep into the night, never satisfying her and never letting her go.<\/p>\n<p>She tried to set a rule for herself, back in the daylight, when she was still in charge.\u00a0 No writing after 9 o\u2019clock pm.\u00a0 She thought a reasonable limit would give her a chance to disengage before she went to bed.\u00a0 But she breaks her rule all the time.<\/p>\n<p>What is this obsession?\u00a0 Why does she feel this urgency to keeping pushing and pushing at the same recalcitrant novel?\u00a0 Why is she sucked in so many nights to the slippery, childish side of her that can\u2019t let go? A new star, ages away, rolls in the black universe and sends its velvet light her way. \u00a0This gift she senses only after the tipping point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Her brain is fried, and she\u2019s been sitting in the same chair for hours and hours.\u00a0 The house is quiet, it\u2019s late, and the responsible adult in her tells her she ought to quit writing and go to bed. \u00a0But she doesn\u2019t.\u00a0 She hangs on, rereading sentences, pondering words, taking a long time to make [&hellip;]<\/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":[246,37],"class_list":["post-3125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-project-next","tag-writing-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3125","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=3125"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3135,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3125\/revisions\/3135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}