{"id":3233,"date":"2014-01-15T09:45:17","date_gmt":"2014-01-15T14:45:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.old.caraghobrien.com\/book\/?p=3233"},"modified":"2014-01-15T09:45:17","modified_gmt":"2014-01-15T14:45:17","slug":"progress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/writing\/progress\/","title":{"rendered":"Progress"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-3234\" alt=\"tracks\" src=\"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/tracks.jpg\" width=\"250\" height=\"280\" \/>If you\u2019ve driven on a road trip, you know the calculation of time into mileage. \u00a0A minute equals a mile. \u00a0An hour on the freeway will take you sixty miles, and a day will take you four hundred miles or more.\u00a0 It\u2019s a fair exchange of time for distance.\u00a0 That\u2019s progress.<\/p>\n<p>For writing a novel, I wish I could say that time transformed into pages, and pages added up to chapters, and enough chapters made a book.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t feel that way to me, though, because the route isn\u2019t straight.\u00a0 It includes so much backtracking, detouring, and road-building.\u00a0 You can\u2019t make progress unless you put the time in, but ironically, it can be problematic to see progress until you reach a major milestone.\u00a0 Then, after days and weeks of plodding, if you look over your shoulder, you\u2019re surprised to see the distance you\u2019ve come.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m reaching another milestone.\u00a0 I\u2019ve promised this draft to my editor by Friday.\u00a0 When she and I spoke in November, I realized I should scrap the last third of my novel and try a different plot.\u00a0 It has meant another major reworking of the novel, but I think, <i>I think<\/i> I\u2019m going the right direction now.\u00a0 My book has a new, nearly complete shape.\u00a0 I\u2019m counting this as progress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you\u2019ve driven on a road trip, you know the calculation of time into mileage. \u00a0A minute equals a mile. \u00a0An hour on the freeway will take you sixty miles, and a day will take you four hundred miles or more.\u00a0 It\u2019s a fair exchange of time for distance.\u00a0 That\u2019s progress. For writing a novel, [&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-3233","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\/3233","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=3233"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3238,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3233\/revisions\/3238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}