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?

This week I’ll be doing some pre-writing for the thesis novella I’ll be writing in August, getting down a bunch of vignettes where Is tart to nail the voice and the central character, plus outlining some ideas for all the works in the series so they’ll serve as a unified whole.

I’ll also be writing the second quarter of the current novella, where the investigation truly begins.

What’s inspiring me this week?

I read Lisa Cron’s Story Genius, which is a how-to-write-a-novel book that earns its distinction between putting a whole lot of attention on the internal conflict that drives a character (and really fleshing out why it’s important). I’m not always 100% on board with the approach the book is taking, but the thinking behind it is incredibly interesting and immediately started shaping my thinking about the thesis project that will be dealing with characters who are iconic rather than dramatic.

It’s possible a fairly rich seam has just opened up in the thesis chapter I’m writing as a result of that, but I’m still puzzling my way through the realisations.

What part of my project an I avoiding?

I got halfway through hammering out my business plan for the next two-to-three years last week, then allowed myself to start getting distracted by unknown variables within the plan and external demands on my time. I really should go back and finish things properly, if only so I’ve got a reliable measure of what “a good day’s work” actually means over the next few years.

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?

Managed to rough out a first act for the novelette I started last week, but there’s a lot of gaps in the narrative. I’m experimenting with a particular approach to workflow at the moment – working quarter by quarter, revising as I go, so I’ve started typing up the hand-written draft and fleshing out the scenes that need it. Probably leaning a little stronger towards novella as a result, and my goal this week is to get the next quarter hand-written and the first act fully typed up.

What’s inspiring me this week?

I’m spending some quality time on the Inhabitat blog again, collating articles like this one and this one about the intersection of algae farming, architecture, and air quality. I’ll be on-deck to start drafting the first instalment of my thesis series next month and there’s an awful lot of space-based settlement involved, so I’m starting to think through the look and feel of the setting alongside the science of keeping humans alive in the vacuum or hostile environments.

What part of my project an I avoiding?

I got a lot better at hitting a work/life balance over the last week, but I’m rapidly coming up against the problem of too-many-tasks, not-enough-time. There are currently three things I’m trying to cram into the 9-5 work day: GenreCon work, creative work, reading and annotating theory for the thesis. Getting the right balance is tough, and I still haven’t quite got it down yet.

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 thesis prospectus was submitted on Friday, which means I get to shift gears and focus on creative work a little more for the latter half of the year. This week, that takes the form of a story that will either end up being a novella or novelette about an broker of occult artifacts and the trouble he runs into when his best friend cuts him out of a deal.

What’s inspiring me this week?

I read CS Pacat’s The Captive Prince in preparation for an In Conversation that’s happening a little later in the month, and it’s an intriguing book to look at in that context. A lot of the hype that surrounded it’s original release was all about trying to position it within the marketplace, and there were a *lot* of references to the series as an erotic Game of Thrones. That undersells the book quite considerably, and misses what’s really interesting about the series.  It’s doing a lot more with the traditions of romantic fantasy – quite intentionally, would be my guess –

What part of my project an I avoiding?

I need to critique a friend’s novel this week and it’s not currently accounted for in my to-do list, and I’ve got two weeks to do a bunch of reading and notes for the next phase of the thesis (aka writing the chapter that I’m actually doing the thesis to write).