Sunday Circle

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?

My major goal this week is landing the second chapter of my exegesis draft and officially hitting the 50% done phase of the critical side of my thesis. It’s slowed me down a little because it’s a gear-change part of the chapter–l’ve got to take the arguments I’ve been setting up and apply it to actual series works. This is the bit that I find tricky about theory–I can apply it to my own work easily enough, but always feel dicey about using it to critique other people’s creative products.

What’s inspiring me this week?

I’m going to split this answer in two this week. On the creative side of things, I finally sat down and watched Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse this week, and verily, it’s a damned awesome film that gets better the more I poke at it and explore how it was made. For me, it’s one of those films that really brings home the power of having a unified theme–everyone’s motivations in the film, whether hero or villain, seems to revolve around the idea of family and loss, and the contrasting ways they react to that is part of the appeal. 

On the more practical side, Tobias Buckell’s post about intentionally dropping his daily wordcount goal down to 500 is a great, though-provoking post about what productivity really looks like. Incredibly well-timed, too, given that my brain is starting to whir into a faster-faster-faster-catch-up-catch-up-catch-up mode after all the recent disruptions to my process. 

What action do I need to take?

I did my monthly checkpoint for November and outlined ten major projects that hold my attention this month, ranging from writing goals (finish the exegesis draft, write a novella dubbed Project Thug), work goals (marking lands tomorrow), and household tasks. 

Interestingly, a good chunk of those don’t have clear definitions and hard edges–I don’t really know what success looks like, how I’m going to achieve them, or what concerns impact upon my ability to work on them. Part of my goal for the week will be sitting down and doing a firm playbook for the coming months–clear project definitions, rough plans, breakdowns of prep that needs to take place. 

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 gearing up to announce the next short story collection this week, which means focusing on proofing pages, producing meta-data/blurbs, and doing the text around the main text ahead of the launch-date at the close of the month.

On the writing front, it’s all engines go on the thesis—I’m aiming to get the critical half drafted by the end of November, then switching back to the creative work over the Christmas break.

What’s inspiring me this week?

My partner and I mainlined the first two seasons of The United States of Tara this week, which is a show full of incredible performances (particularly from Toni Collette). We’d been meaning to watch it for a very long time, but it’s only recently that we discovered it streaming on Amazon here in Australia. 

I tend to run a bit hot-and-cold on Diablo Cody’s obsessions as a screenwriter, but this is definitely one where things came together in an interesting way.  

What action do I need to take?

I mentioned being at the end of a long-running superhero RPG campaign back on Friday, and this coming week will see the final session to we wrap up an eight- or nine-year game. 

Which means it’s both time to plan this week’s sessions, but also put together some idea of how we’re going to transition to something new when we’re done. 

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. You can find a more detailed post and how and why it’s a useful thing to do here. Want to get 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?

The project sitting top of mind as I sit down to do my weekly plan is a lecture I’m delivering Wednesday, but that’s a small amount of my weekly work in terms of raw writing time.

The larger focus is going to my PhD exegesis. At time of writing I’m about 4,000 words off minimum viable length for a submission—not the same thing as being done at all, but the point where the pressure is off a little because I know that worst-case scenario there is something I can pull together. With the deadline looming next year, I’m really pushing to hit that milestone as soon as I can and giving the theory the bulk of my writing time.

It’s a short-term hit to fiction productivity, but it will come with long-term gains. The less time spent with the exegesis making me nervous, the more of my focus I can give to fiction down the line. 

I do, however, have the line level of a short-story collection on my plate at the moment, which is giving me some interesting creative challenges on the fiction front. 

What’s inspiring me this week?

John Milton Edwards The Fiction Factory, which is essentially a “how to make a career as a professional writer” guide written by a pulp writer who went full-time in 1893 and covers a period into the 1920s.

It’s an utterly fascinating read given the conversations I’ve been having about productivity and the push to do more as writers—one of the recurring motifs Edwards builds around is yearly income reports about his career, what he wrote and how much it earned him. He doesn’t use the factory term lightly–a yearly listing will frequently group together 20 or 30 blocks of novella-length work put together for a nickel or dime novel series, then list everything else produced over the course of the year. At his height, he claims to maintain a pace of two “novelettes” a week, although most contemporary writers would regard these as closer to novellas.

I took a stack of notes for this one and spent a lot of time thinking about what I’d like to take away from it. While Edward’s style may be a little formal, it’s also beguiling in its arguments—to the point where I needed to think real hard about why I found myself tempted to take something onboard as a tactic. 

What action do I need to take?

Make sure I write a newsletter this week. I have sent nothing out since my grandmother died, which is ticking into three weeks of radio silence. Part of the hold-up is a mental block around announcements that have been delayed, but the other part is just a general stall of processes that set in.