Sunday Circle

The TLDR version of this post: I’m taking a time-out to rethink the Sunday Circle and how it functions in 2020, which may see it either migrate to a new platform or have the shutters pulled down entirely.

I started the Sunday Circle a few years back, inspired by a write-up of the idea in Todd Henry’s The Accidental Creative and an idea that it might be possible to replicate the process online. Over the years we’ve had a number of writers, voice actors, and others drop by on a Sunday to check in with each other, laying out their various projects and inspirations for the coming week.

At the time I kicked off the Sunday Circle, it was part of a long-term strategy for the blog. A natural fit for the kinds of topics I blogged about and talked about in the long term.

These days, not so much. My focus has shifted away from the long conversations about writing and business, and blogs posts don’t get the numbers they once did (largely, I suspect, because they can no longer cross-post to a personal Facebook stream).

And one of the other big take-aways from the Accidental Creative is this:

It’s easy to assume that because something has always been done a certain way, that must be the one and only right way to do it. We sometimes develop the assumption that because a system or method brought us success in one instance, it will always do so. Or we may assume that because something didn’t work in one instance, it will never work under any circumstances. Any of these assumptions can, over time, be disastrous to our creative process because they limit how we look at problems.

Henry, Todd. The Accidental Creative: How to Be Brilliant at a Moment’s Notice (p. 68).

The Sunday Circle was always an attempt to solve problems for me: a means of connecting with other writers and artists as I moved away from regular work, a public habit that prompted me to define my focus and shift attention onto positive influences on my work.

Lately, it’s felt like less of a solution to those problems, so I’m packing it away for a stretch and see if there’s an alternative solution.

The Sunday Circle is the weekly check-in where I ask the creative-types who follow this blog to weigh in about their goals, inspirations, and challenges for the coming week. The logic behind it can be found here. Want to be involved? It’s easy – just answer three questions in the comments or on your own blog (with a link in the comments here, so that everyone can find them).

After that, throw some thoughts around about other people’s projects, ask questions if you’re so inclined. Be supportive above all.

Then show up again next Sunday when the circle updates next, letting us know how you did on your weekly project and what you’ve got coming down the pipe in the coming week (if you’d like to part of the circle, without subscribing to the rest of the blog, you can sign-up for reminders via email here).

MY CHECK-IN

What am I working on this week?

I’m ten thousand words into a crime novella at the moment, and in another two thousand or so I’ll hit a natural stopping point in the structure and set it aside to do spend some quality time on thesis novellas. Specifically, Project Bug, which I’d like to have done to submit to my supervisor before the end of january.

What’s inspiring me this week?

Kathleen Jennings sold me on Tessa Dare’s Romancing The Duke via the suggestion that it’s a regency romance about Star Wars fandom. I couldn’t picture such a thing, but dove into the novel regardless…and was immediately rewarded by a phenomenal regency that was, 100%, about Star Wars Fandom (among other things).

What impressed me most is that even with the warning, I didn’t pick up on straight away. The Star Wars riffs are so bald-faced that I overlooked them, and it’s not until the regency equivalent of a Comicon shows up it actually clicked. 

What action do I need to take?

It’s looking like Brain Jar will expanding its stable of authors beyond me next year, which means one of my pressing tasks is pulling together a contract outlining terms. Harder than it sounds, given the existence of ebooks and print on demand, as the return of rights gets a bit stickier due to the lfact that books are never truly “out of print.”

The Sunday Circle is the weekly check-in where I ask the creative-types who follow this blog to weigh in about their goals, inspirations, and challenges for the coming week. The logic behind it can be found here. Want to be involved? It’s easy – just answer three questions in the comments or on your own blog (with a link in the comments here, so that everyone can find them).

After that, throw some thoughts around about other people’s projects, ask questions if you’re so inclined. Be supportive above all.

Then show up again next Sunday when the circle updates next, letting us know how you did on your weekly project and what you’ve got coming down the pipe in the coming week (if you’d like to part of the circle, without subscribing to the rest of the blog, you can sign-up for reminders via email here).

MY CHECK-IN

What am I working on this week?

I’m finally at a point where the exegesis draft only needs half my daily writing time, rather than all of it, so I’m going to try and kickstart a fiction project this way. My goal is to get a few words down on a novella draft, and plot out the novella that I’ll be writing after it.

What’s inspiring me this week?

Loretta Chase’s Mr Impossible, a historical romance about a bookish widower and an irresponsible English nobleman chasing across Egypt to track down the rapscallions who have made off with said widower’s brother. It’s incredibly solid romance, reminding me a lot of the sheer glee I take in Anne Gracie’s work, but anyone whose a fan of the Brandon Fraser Mummy films is going to recognise this dynamic and thrill at the characters.

For me, it also got me thinking about the notes for a planetary romance series I’ve been meaning to write for years, in which a character named Mrs Northbrook investigates wrongdoing on Steampunk Mars.

What action do I need to take?

I need to go through my thesis draft and check all the references, then compile the bibliography. I’ve been putting this one off for a while now, but the time has come.