{"id":357,"date":"2011-11-07T08:54:46","date_gmt":"2011-11-07T08:54:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theycrawl.com\/news\/?p=357"},"modified":"2011-11-07T08:56:49","modified_gmt":"2011-11-07T08:56:49","slug":"first-draft-final-draft-and-the-distance-between","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.theycrawl.com\/news\/?p=357","title":{"rendered":"First Draft, Final Draft and the Distance Between&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Absolutely <strong>delighted<\/strong> to have just discovered that the magnificent <strong>Mr H. <\/strong>of brilliant blog <a href=\"http:\/\/bookzone4boys.blogspot.com\/\"><strong>The Book Zone<\/strong><\/a> has chosen the first paragraphs of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theblacktattoo.com\"><strong>The Black Tattoo<\/strong><\/a> as <a href=\"http:\/\/bookzone4boys.blogspot.com\/2011\/11\/attention-grabber-4-black-tattoo-by-sam.html?showComment=1320651839138#c3319639365139902118\">this week&#8217;s <strong>Attention Grabber<\/strong><\/a>: <em>&#8220;my new weekly feature where I post what I think is a great  opening paragraph to a book, the sort of opening that pulls young  readers in and hooks them from the start.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>But I was particularly touched by the following: <em>&#8220;Having  just started my first ever attempt at <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Nanowrimo\">NaNoWriMo<\/a> I am all of a sudden  feeling a small amount of hate for Sam, and many others &#8211; I wish I could  write this well!&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The opening paragraphs of <strong>The Black Tattoo<\/strong> &#8211; and <strong>anything<\/strong> in <strong>any<\/strong> of my books &#8211; <strong>did not come out like that the first time I wrote them<\/strong>. What you read in my books is the result of a <strong>lot<\/strong> of <strong>redrafting and polishing<\/strong>. For my thoughts on that, and some glimpses of what the opening of <strong>Black Tat<\/strong> <em>might<\/em> have been, <a href=\"http:\/\/bookzone4boys.blogspot.com\/2011\/11\/attention-grabber-4-black-tattoo-by-sam.html?showComment=1320651839138#c3319639365139902118\"><strong>click through to the post on The Book Zone and check the comments. <\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Absolutely delighted to have just discovered that the magnificent Mr H. of brilliant blog The Book Zone has chosen the first paragraphs of The Black Tattoo as this week&#8217;s Attention Grabber: &#8220;my new weekly feature where I post what I think is a great opening paragraph to a book, the sort of opening that pulls [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.theycrawl.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.theycrawl.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.theycrawl.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.theycrawl.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.theycrawl.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.theycrawl.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.theycrawl.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.theycrawl.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.theycrawl.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}