{"id":465,"date":"2016-09-25T16:09:49","date_gmt":"2016-09-25T20:09:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.durkota.net\/?p=465"},"modified":"2016-09-25T20:59:11","modified_gmt":"2016-09-26T00:59:11","slug":"to-conjoin-or-not-to-conjoin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/durkota.net\/?p=465","title":{"rendered":"To conjoin or not to conjoin?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I attended the second session of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.durkota.net\/2016\/08\/coffee-and-karma\/\">VetsWrite<\/a> yesterday. Although it has been lightly attended, I have enjoyed the company of fellow writers and the fresh perspective. The writing exercises have been truly helpful; I\u2019m embarrassed to admit I really can\u2019t remember the last time I conducted a free-write on my own. At the end of the session, Ashley and Brad suggested that we share some pages from our current projects and discuss them during the next session.<a href=\"https:\/\/www.durkota.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/write.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-129 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/www.durkota.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/write-300x175.jpg\" alt=\"write\" width=\"300\" height=\"175\" srcset=\"https:\/\/durkota.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/write-300x175.jpg 300w, https:\/\/durkota.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/write-676x395.jpg 676w, https:\/\/durkota.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/write.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This presented me with a conundrum.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve been working on two separate novels for the last few months. They are each stalled around 30% complete. One keeps distracting me from the other. I was beginning to worry that I would never finish either since they both were still missing so much.<\/p>\n<p>So, which one do I share? I was about to flip a coin when I decided just to share an excerpt from each. Perhaps the group could point me in the right direction or provide some needed guidance. I opened the files and began reading. One, then the other, and then back again.<\/p>\n<p>As I read, I slowly began to realize that what each one was missing was possibly contained in the other. In a moment of Zen-like clarity I decided they needed to be combined. They wanted to be combined. In fact, they were practically begging to be combined. I spent the rest of the day, most of the night, and virtually every waking moment since then trying to pull the pieces together in some comprehensible fashion.<\/p>\n<p>I was frustrated last night when I put them away, but I woke up with a few ideas. After some effort this afternoon, I think I\u2019ve made a breakthrough. The result may not quite be 60% of a completed story, but close. In the very least, I am excited to have made some headway and I was also able to easily identify the pages I need to share.<\/p>\n<p>Other random musings from the weekend:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Only 18 days until hockey returns. Go Pens!<\/li>\n<li>I am loving my new Motorola Moto Z.<\/li>\n<li>Comcast is irritating me by repeatedly pushing the addition of a land-line phone. Today they resorted to scare tactics: \u201cHow would you make a call in an emergency if your cell phone wasn\u2019t available?\u201d I guess they fail to realize my cell phone is never out of arm\u2019s reach.<\/li>\n<li>I am certainly going to keep my <a href=\"https:\/\/www.durkota.net\/2016\/03\/the-walking-dumb\/\">promise from March<\/a> and never again review an episode of <em>The Walking Dead<\/em>. In fact, I may not even watch the new season. I\u2019m actually surprised that my disdain has not faded over the summer.<\/li>\n<li>I made some additions to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.durkota.net\/writer-resources\/\">Writer Resources<\/a> page.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=durk13\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I attended the second session of VetsWrite yesterday. Although it has been lightly attended, I have enjoyed the company of fellow writers and the fresh perspective. The writing exercises have been truly helpful; I\u2019m embarrassed to admit I really can\u2019t remember the last time I conducted a free-write on my own. At the end of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,10,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellany-entertainment","category-musings","category-writery-things"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/durkota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/durkota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/durkota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/durkota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/durkota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=465"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/durkota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":467,"href":"https:\/\/durkota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465\/revisions\/467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/durkota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/durkota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/durkota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}