{"id":29590,"date":"2015-07-12T11:00:21","date_gmt":"2015-07-11T23:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=29590"},"modified":"2015-07-11T19:47:31","modified_gmt":"2015-07-11T07:47:31","slug":"the-most-important-lesson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2015\/07\/12\/the-most-important-lesson\/","title":{"rendered":"The most important lesson &#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Recently, I was asked what was the most important lesson I had learned in the process of becoming&#8212;and I suppose <em>being<\/em>&#8212;a published author.<\/p>\n<p>The answer, which I found a pretty easy one, was this:<\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"color: #000080;\">&#8220;<em>Just this: it\u2019s the story that matters. It\u2019s your only pilot star.<\/em>&#8220;<\/span><\/h3>\n<p>What I mean by that is: that it is frequently a long and solitary (so yes, sometimes lonely!) slog writing a book in the first place, and no light task getting it out into the world either.<\/p>\n<p>Once you do, there is no assurance of plain sailing &#8212; sales may not be steady, reviews may be hard to come and not all will be friendly, so building a readership may be proverbially tough.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s why I believe a writer really has to feel passionate and positive about the story she or he is telling, because it&#8217;s that passion and commitment and love of the work itself that keeps an author on course, and gets her or him through the rough patches.<\/p>\n<p>Or that has been my experience at any rate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently, I was asked what was the most important lesson I had learned in the process of becoming&#8212;and I suppose being&#8212;a published author. The answer, which I found a pretty easy one, was this: &#8220;Just this: it\u2019s the story that matters. It\u2019s your only pilot star.&#8220; What I mean by that is: that it is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-what-im-doing","category-about-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29590"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29590\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29593,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29590\/revisions\/29593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}