{"id":167,"date":"2010-04-17T06:14:25","date_gmt":"2010-04-17T13:14:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/?p=167"},"modified":"2010-04-17T06:14:25","modified_gmt":"2010-04-17T13:14:25","slug":"how-to-start","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/?p=167","title":{"rendered":"How to Start"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Whatever the story is about, it is something that is of interest to human beings because it amplifies some aspect of what it means to be living.” I lifted this sentence off of a website for writers (were I more adept at this, I’d provide the link here – one day!) and simple as it is, I find it a helpful beacon as I swim around trying to re-start my book. <\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

Beginnings: how can I hook you, reader? What is my story? Why did I write it? What do I want the reader to take away from it?\u00a0 Why am I so stumped on these questions when they are so fundamental and I have hundreds of pages of ‘book’?Are the answers in what I have written already? Or are they still to be answered?\u00a0My brilliant sister gently guides me with these questions. For weeks I have been juggling different parts of already written chapters — to start here? or here? cutting and pasting in the hope that the new combination will make my story sing. \u00a0But it doesn’t yet. Not yet.<\/p>\n

What began as an exorcism of anger and grief became a hopeful testimony of love and determination that my daughter\u2019s life be better than mine, and that my life, be better than before.\u00a0 And it is. \u00a0I could<\/em> leave it at that, but after working in the book business for more than a decade, I might as well shoot for those dusty shelves myself. \u00a0And perhaps one day my tale will serve as someone else’s beacon of light.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Whatever the story is about, it is something that is of interest to human beings because it amplifies some aspect of what it means to be living.” I lifted this sentence off of a website for writers (were I more adept at this, I’d provide the link here – one day!) and simple as it … Continue reading How to Start<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":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_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[5,7],"class_list":["post-167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-memoir","tag-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pPzTS-2H","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=167"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":170,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions\/170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}