{"id":15250,"date":"2026-01-12T21:19:30","date_gmt":"2026-01-12T21:19:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/breanamarie.com\/playground\/?p=15250"},"modified":"2026-01-12T21:19:30","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T21:19:30","slug":"john-gardner-on-becoming-a-novelist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/breanamarie.com\/playground\/guest-bloggers\/john-gardner-on-becoming-a-novelist\/","title":{"rendered":"John Gardner, \u201cOn Becoming a Novelist\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"360\" height=\"557\" src=\"https:\/\/breanamarie.com\/playground\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Gardner.OnBecomingANovelist.gif\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-15251\" style=\"aspect-ratio:0.646327778712899;width:77px;height:auto\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe read five words on the first page of a really good novel and we begin to forget that we are reading printed words on a page; we begin to see images \u2013 a dog hunting through garbage cans, a plane circling above Alaskan mountains, an old lady furtively licking her napkin at a party. We sip into a dream, forgetting the room we\u2019re sitting in, forgetting it\u2019s lunchtime or time to go to work.\u201d \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/John_Gardner_(American_writer)\">John Gardner,<\/a> \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Becoming-Novelist-John-Gardner-ebook\/dp\/B00AB7NYZU\/ref=books_amazonstores_desktop_mfs_aufs_ap_sc_dsk_6?_encoding=UTF8&amp;pd_rd_w=46NY3&amp;content-id=amzn1.sym.6d92b4c0-97d6-4063-b66e-20890dfbd616&amp;pf_rd_p=6d92b4c0-97d6-4063-b66e-20890dfbd616&amp;pf_rd_r=130-3125883-0021537&amp;pd_rd_wg=2SvQT&amp;pd_rd_r=afbdac97-bb32-4ebc-9923-300d5e0e180b\">On Becoming a Novelist<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cWe read five words on the first page of a really good novel and we begin to forget that we are reading printed words on a page; we begin to see images \u2013 a dog hunting through garbage cans, a plane circling above Alaskan mountains, an old lady furtively licking her napkin at a party. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"selected_specialist_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[2485,2486],"class_list":["post-15250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guest-bloggers","tag-john-gardner","tag-on-becoming-a-novelist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/breanamarie.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/breanamarie.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/breanamarie.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/breanamarie.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/breanamarie.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15250"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/breanamarie.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15253,"href":"https:\/\/breanamarie.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15250\/revisions\/15253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/breanamarie.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/breanamarie.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/breanamarie.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}