{"id":1986,"date":"2011-12-02T10:06:10","date_gmt":"2011-12-02T14:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ChristyEnglish.com\/?p=1986"},"modified":"2011-12-02T11:45:01","modified_gmt":"2011-12-02T15:45:01","slug":"giving-a-gift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ChristyEnglish.com\/?p=1986","title":{"rendered":"Giving A Gift"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ChristyEnglish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/gift.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1987 lazyload\" title=\"Gift\" data-src=\"http:\/\/www.ChristyEnglish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/gift-300x199.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" data-srcset=\"http:\/\/www.ChristyEnglish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/gift-300x199.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.ChristyEnglish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/gift.jpg 849w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 300px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 300\/199;\" \/><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1987\" title=\"Gift\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ChristyEnglish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/gift-300x199.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.ChristyEnglish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/gift-300x199.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.ChristyEnglish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/gift.jpg 849w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/noscript><\/a>Photo Credit<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/day1of1.wordpress.com\/2011\/07\/09\/the-gift\/\">http:\/\/day1of1.wordpress.com\/2011\/07\/09\/the-gift\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>As I wrap presents for my loved ones for Christmas, I find myself musing on the beauty of gift giving. There is a wonderful feeling of joy that comes from preparing a gift for a friend, choosing it, wrapping it, and then the pleasure of watching them open it in front of you.<\/p>\n<p>Writing a novel, revising it in the last pass, is a bit like that. Though I don&#8217;t know many of my readers, I work hard to hone my craft and my plot for them, I make sure my characters&#8217; voices are clear and lucid, I make the book the best I can.<\/p>\n<p>Finishing a novel is something like preparing a gift for a friend you will never meet. Writing a book is putting together ship in a bottle, and sending it out onto the waves, hoping that the bottle won&#8217;t break, that the waves will be kind, that your ship will wash up whole on another shore.<\/p>\n<p>I am grateful for being able build that ship. The act of creation is a gift, too, and I am happy to receive it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Photo Credit http:\/\/day1of1.wordpress.com\/2011\/07\/09\/the-gift\/ As I wrap presents for my loved ones for Christmas, I find myself musing on the beauty of gift giving. There is a wonderful feeling of joy that comes from preparing a gift for a friend, choosing it, wrapping it, and then the pleasure of watching them open it in front of &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ChristyEnglish.com\/?p=1986\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Giving A Gift<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":""},"categories":[56,6],"tags":[151,149,150,148,47],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ChristyEnglish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1986"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ChristyEnglish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ChristyEnglish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ChristyEnglish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ChristyEnglish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1986"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.ChristyEnglish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1990,"href":"http:\/\/www.ChristyEnglish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1986\/revisions\/1990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ChristyEnglish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ChristyEnglish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ChristyEnglish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}