{"id":1673,"date":"2016-02-21T19:06:04","date_gmt":"2016-02-22T02:06:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikebellah.com\/wordpress\/?p=1673"},"modified":"2016-02-22T07:48:33","modified_gmt":"2016-02-22T14:48:33","slug":"messy-first-drafts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/?p=1673","title":{"rendered":"Messy First Drafts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mikebellah.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/mb_color_bestyearsblog-150x15019.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/mikebellah.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/mb_color_bestyearsblog-150x15019.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"mb_color_bestyearsblog-150x1501\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-1674\" \/><\/a>\u201cMessy first drafts,\u201d I tell my students, \u201care not only common for professional writers, but necessary.\u201d Because, as Professor Furnish used to tell us grad students, \u201c90% of all good writing is revised writing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And, of course, one can\u2019t revise what isn\u2019t there.<\/p>\n<p>Sounds easy\u2014to produce a collection of disjointed thoughts that touch on what we hope to say but somehow can&#8217;t say, at least not as plainly and persuasively as we intend.<\/p>\n<p>But it\u2019s not easy\u2014because we don\u2019t like messes, especially the ones we create. And so we stare at the empty page and wait, and stare some more, and wait some more and more.<\/p>\n<p>Which is what I\u2019ve been doing most of the last hour.<\/p>\n<p>Perfectionism is not my friend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cMessy first drafts,\u201d I tell my students, \u201care not only common for professional writers, but necessary.\u201d Because, as Professor Furnish used to tell us grad students, \u201c90% of all good writing is revised writing.\u201d And, of course, one can\u2019t revise what isn\u2019t there. Sounds easy\u2014to produce a collection of disjointed thoughts that touch on what [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1673"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1673\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1678,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1673\/revisions\/1678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}