{"id":1049,"date":"2013-01-28T08:00:28","date_gmt":"2013-01-28T14:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/?p=1049"},"modified":"2013-01-26T11:47:24","modified_gmt":"2013-01-26T17:47:24","slug":"being-a-wall-isnt-good-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/2013\/01\/28\/being-a-wall-isnt-good-enough\/","title":{"rendered":"Being a wall isn&#8217;t good enough"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The other night at tennis I was thinking about a writing metaphor. Last fall I played a guy who was basically a wall. He could get to every shot I made. All his shots went in. He didn&#8217;t make mistakes. He beat me easily.<\/p>\n<p>But I kind of wonder how far you can go in tennis like that, without the ace serves or the fancy winning shots that increase the risk of hitting the ball out. <\/p>\n<p>So, the writing connection&#8211;not making mistakes isn&#8217;t good enough. Competent stories are nothing more than competent. People don&#8217;t talk about the stories that do everything right but don&#8217;t have a spark. Being a wall isn&#8217;t good enough.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m better at writing than at tennis, but even though I don&#8217;t make many mistakes, I&#8217;m still not making those winning shots. Got to work on that.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m pretty sure &#8220;keep your eye on the ball&#8221; could be applied to writing, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The other night at tennis I was thinking about a writing metaphor. Last fall I played a guy who was basically a wall. He could get to every shot I made. All his shots went in. He didn&#8217;t make mistakes. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/2013\/01\/28\/being-a-wall-isnt-good-enough\/\">Continue reading <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":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1049"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1050,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049\/revisions\/1050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}