{"id":9730,"date":"2022-05-03T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-05-03T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9730"},"modified":"2022-05-03T08:26:32","modified_gmt":"2022-05-03T12:26:32","slug":"where-story-ideas-come-from-why-courage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9730","title":{"rendered":"Where Story Ideas Come From: Why Courage?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I didn\u2019t set out to write a book about courage. In fact I was probably on a second or third draft, pestering myself with questions like, \u201cwhat am I really trying to say?\u201d \u201cwhy might readers find this book not just entertaining but meaningful?\u201d \u201cdo I <\/em>find it meaningful and why?\u201d i\u2019m not a writer who can dash off several books a year; I have to think about them a while. And thinking about these questions, I finally realized I was missing an easy opportunity to express what it is about, without having to pen a preachy narration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the opening pages of my new book, Architect of Courage<\/em>, Manhattan architect Archer Landis discovers his lover has been murdered. He\u2019s afraid of the fallout if he\u2019s caught in her apartment, and without considering the implications, he delays calling the police. Instead, he hastily returns to the business dinner he\u2019d left not long before, determined to make the call from there. Alas, circumstances prevent it. What had he been thinking?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dinner is to celebrate the important award one of his best friends is receiving and now he has to sit through it. The friend, Phil Prinz, takes this speaking opportunity to talk about courage. Now, we\u2019ve all been to dinners where the speaker rambles on about some high-flown topic, and we\u2019ve occasionally been pleasantly surprised to hear some nuggets worth remembering. Phil chose a worthy topic, but he\u2019s no orator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still he breaks the topic down in an elegant way, describing four kinds of courage (briefly in the novel): physical courage, you know what that is; mental courage, when people dare to think in new ways; emotional courage, when they put their feelings on the line; and moral courage, when they do the right thing simply because it\u2019s right. Landis doesn\u2019t spend a lot of time then or later reflecting on Phil\u2019s remarks\u2014he\u2019s too upset about what happened earlier in the evening. But I hope I\u2019ve planted a seed for readers so they recognize that, despite his early failure, Landis displays all of four types of courage before the story ends. But if all you’re looking for is a lively adventure, there’s that too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Available from Amazon on preorder<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I didn\u2019t set out to write a book about courage. In fact I was probably on a second or third draft, pestering myself with questions like, \u201cwhat am I really trying to say?\u201d \u201cwhy might readers find this book not … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The great thing about rewrite is you may finally uncover what you are trying to say. I felt like an archaeologist happily discovering a theme I hadn't realized was there.","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}},"categories":[440,61,40,174,1979],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventure","category-character","category-fiction","category-first-draft-blog","category-mywriting"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2wW","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9730"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9734,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9730\/revisions\/9734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}