{"id":15023,"date":"2021-01-27T19:15:18","date_gmt":"2021-01-28T00:15:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=15023"},"modified":"2021-01-27T19:16:23","modified_gmt":"2021-01-28T00:16:23","slug":"resisting-the-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=15023","title":{"rendered":"Resisting the draft"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>No review tonight.<\/strong> Instead, a little writing update. I\u2019m sort of at a milestone, having sort of finished the first draft of the next Erling novel, whose name \u2013 I think \u2013 will be <em>King of Rogaland<\/em>. I didn\u2019t really want to call it that, having used the word \u201cking\u201d in my last title, but it seems to be what the book wants to be called.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I say the first draft is \u201csort of\u201d finished because I\u2019ve already identified a major revision I need to make, which will involve ripping up a fair amount of the work I\u2019ve done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Which is, I keep telling people, precisely the way it\u2019s supposed to be. The first piece of advice I give to young writers is, \u201cDon\u2019t worry about making the first draft perfect. Your first draft is supposed to suck. That\u2019s its function. The first draft is raw material \u2013 unshaped clay, unchiseled stone. It\u2019s what you make a real story out of.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What amazes me is that I don\u2019t follow my own advice. I sit here thinking what a failure the book is, because the first draft is flawed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It\u2019s like I don\u2019t even listen to myself. Considering all the time and money I\u2019ve spent maintaining this font of wisdom in my life, I don\u2019t even use it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">No wonder I never made the bestseller lists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now, to take your mind off my miseries, here\u2019s a short film \u2013 about a half hour. It\u2019s an adaptation of a Terry Pratchett story (or at least based on his characters; I\u2019ve never read Pratchett). But it impressed me in many ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-embed-handler wp-block-embed-embed-handler wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"TROLL BRIDGE | The Moving Picture\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/V7v_TdLviUE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>No review tonight. Instead, a little writing update. I\u2019m sort of at a milestone, having sort of finished the first draft of the next Erling novel, whose name \u2013 I think \u2013 will be King of Rogaland. I didn\u2019t really want to call it that, having used the word \u201cking\u201d in my last title, but &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=15023\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Resisting the draft<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17],"tags":[3603,2755,3604],"class_list":["post-15023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-king-of-rogaland","tag-terry-pratchett","tag-troll-bridge"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15023"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15026,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15023\/revisions\/15026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}