{"id":5875,"date":"2021-11-23T14:08:52","date_gmt":"2021-11-23T19:08:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/?p=5875"},"modified":"2021-11-23T14:18:40","modified_gmt":"2021-11-23T19:18:40","slug":"iterations-of-a-writer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/writing\/iterations-of-a-writer\/","title":{"rendered":"Iterations of a Writer"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>At the top of my Journal document, where I\u2019ll see it every morning, is a blue message that reads:<\/p>\n

The only failing is not trying at all. That\u2019s the loss, the mistake, the cowardice. <\/span>Be brave, Caragh. Be brave. Face this book you started. It was a good start. <\/span>You wanted to finish a draft by the end of this year, so do it. Get on it. <\/span>Go slowly if you must, but go. The rest can all wait, all of it, until later.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a message from my past self to my today self, reminding me what matters and urging me onward. I sort of love that I can have conversations with different versions of myself. It’s like having a cheering squad of one.<\/p>\n

My drafts are different versions of my mind, too, layering onto each other. My current first draft is so raw, so wild. I can\u2019t even talk about the particulars of it yet to the people I love most because I have so much doubt in it. So much fear, actually.<\/p>\n

Writers aren\u2019t supposed to talk about their doubts until after the redemptive moment when they have a publishing announcement, as if that validates their efforts and weirdness. A publishing contract seems to confer authenticity on a writer, publicly erasing the reclusive, prodding mistakes that happened in the dark. Danielle Lazarin speaks poignantly to this in her recent piece on loss<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m here to say that this time, in private, away from eyes, this time<\/em> is where I discover, over and over again, who I am, or who we are, all of us iterations of me, day after day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the top of my Journal document, where I\u2019ll see it every morning, is a blue message that reads: The only failing is not trying at all. That\u2019s the loss, the mistake, the cowardice. Be brave, Caragh. Be brave. Face this book you started. It was a good start. You wanted to finish a draft […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5877,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[871,37],"class_list":["post-5875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-writing","tag-hope","tag-writing-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5875","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=5875"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5882,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5875\/revisions\/5882"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}