{"id":10322,"date":"2023-03-09T07:51:43","date_gmt":"2023-03-09T12:51:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10322"},"modified":"2023-03-09T07:51:43","modified_gmt":"2023-03-09T12:51:43","slug":"zoom-cat-astrophes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10322","title":{"rendered":"Zoom Cat-astrophes!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The wisdom of a piece of advice in Stephen King\u2019s very useful (and actionable) book, On Writing,<\/a><\/em> has come home to rest in my lap. Purring. Someplace amidst his good advice, he says, \u201cPut the cat out.\u201d In other words, avoid distractions. (No, this is not Save the Cat<\/a><\/em>, that\u2019s another thing altogether!).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twice lately, I\u2019ve had reason to bow to King. My mystery reading group was reviewing this month\u2019s selection, when my Siamese, William, got his head stuck in a desk-top box of tissues and waved it wildly in front of the Zoom camera. So much for a focused discussion. (Video of an earlier, similar episode attached. Who says cats aren\u2019t willing to conduct repeat experiments?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last month, I was the interviewee on a Zoom call about writing, my writing process, and my mystery\/thriller Architect of Courage<\/a><\/em>. Kim Ha of the Pennington public library did the interviewing. While a whole checkerboard of Zoomers watched, I had to get up, call my husband, and have him take William away, because he was playing noisily with a plastic bag. Wouldn\u2019t stop, no matter how hard I glared. Talk about wanting to appear \u201cprofessional\u201d! You can see the interview in this YouTube video<\/a> if you\u2019re interesting in writing, etc., etc. The thoughtful Kim cut out William\u2019s star turn, however. (I\u2019m hoping that wasn\u2019t the best part!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, meanwhile, put the cat out!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The wisdom of a piece of advice in Stephen King\u2019s very useful (and actionable) book, On Writing, has come home to rest in my lap. Purring. Someplace amidst his good advice, he says, \u201cPut the cat out.\u201d In other words, … 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":"What William and I have learned from Stephen King. (lots)","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":[174,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-draft-blog","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2Gu","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10322","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=10322"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10324,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10322\/revisions\/10324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}