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?

I’m kicking off a six-week project sprint tomorrow morning, throwing the bulk of my focus into getting Hell Track finished and off my to-do list. I’ve set myself a benchmark of about fifteen scenes to get through over the next five days, which is more than I’m used to doing, but I’ve also cleared of most distractions until the sprint is over.

What’s inspiring me this week?

I spent some quality time with Matthew Rielly’s Hover Car Racer this week, taking notes about it’s structure and the way it builds tension in the racing scenes. It started out serialised on his website back in the early days of the internet, building in discrete episodes that close down, and I’m really interested in the way that form has impacted on the novel structure. I’m also curious about Rielly’s approach to action scenes – races are a tough thing to render in prose fiction, so it’s intriguing to see how he gets around the fact that everything needs to be contextualised in prose.

What action do I need to take?

I packed on a little extra weight over summer, as one does when deadlines and holidays coincide, but it’s starting to have a really negative effect in terms of my apnea making me tired and vague from about 9:30 PM. This leaves me with two things that absolutely need to start kicking in: paying closer attention to the sleep window I’m leaving myself every night, and working to ease off the weight and get my sleep a little more solid.

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?

It’s been nearly six weeks since I’ve had serious time to devote to fiction rather than thesis drafting, but I’m finally at the point where all the urgent things have been submitted and the next wave is yet to hit. That means my schedule opens up to start prepping You Don’t Want To Be Published for release and familiarise myself with Hell Track once again. I’m going to spend a week working on one particular character’s scenes in the latter, trying to get the spine of their narrative down.

What’s inspiring me this week?

I’ve been re-watching Season 4 of Doctor Who over the last week, largely because my partner hasn’t seen this part of the series. At the same time, I’ve been re-reading Russel Davies The Writers Tale, where he talks about the process of writing/showrunning season 4 with a journalist. It’s an interesting experience: you see the season arc developing from its early stages, gradually getting fleshed out and altering in response to real-world concerns about actor availability. You also get more insight into how ideas develop into stories – and what Davies looks for, in particular – than you’d get out of a dozen ‘how to write’ books.

What action do I need to take?

I’ve let my newsletter slide over the last few weeks through a combination of too little time and too much I want to do with it in the short-term. I really need to sit down and start clarifying the project a little better, including a list of all the current things that are currently getting in the way of me actually writing regularly.

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 have to get all the confirmation documents into the university by 4:00 PM Monday, which means the rest of this week will be spent putting together the 20 minute presentation that’s due on the 31st of January and carefully proofreading You Don’t Want To Be Published. I’ll also be doing a little pre-planning on a couple of stories – throwing around ideas, thinking through the speculative elements and the consequences of putting them there. I’ll need a new story or two by the end of February, at this stage, so I’ll want some options that seem fun.

What’s inspiring me this week? 

I’ve been listening to season eleven of the Writing Excuses podcast on my evening walk this week, and their ongoing discussion of elemental genres and how they can be used is brilliant. I’m a fan of the WE crew at the best of times, given that they’re not afraid to talk about writing beyond the advice-for-beginners stage, but this is probably the best season they’ve done in terms of actual, useful ideas about writing for folks who already have the basics of story down.

What action do I need to take?
The most pressing is sitting down with the full list of things that I’ve got to get done for the confirmation submission Monday and making sure I’ve got them all. I caught one thing I’d overlooked this afternoon, while double-checking formatting, and there are so much paperwork attached to this thing that I’m paranoid.