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?

Working through the feedback on my thesis prospectus and putting together the final rewrites of the supporting documents that go in with it.Things turned out to be in much better shape than I thought when I sent the draft through to my supervisor, so I’m hoping I can have it all out of the way by this time next week.

What’s inspiring me this week?

I know I’ve said this before, but I re-watched the first few episodes of Riverdale this week and it’s a very different experience where you know what they’re building towards in the season finale. There’s an incredible amount of stuff built into the show that you don’t notice right up – little cuts away to minor characters for reactions, or making use of a character’s sight lines to convey things in scenes where they don’t have dialogue – and it’s a lot easier to see the meticulousness of what they’re doing.

I really am going to read something in the coming week, though. I’m starting to get twitchy about the lack of finished books.

What part of my project an I avoiding?

I really, really need to schedule work this week. The last seven days have been weirdly intense and busy, and it’s started to affect my mindset a bit – I’m wavering between intense bursts of doing everything and seeing everyone, alternating with long periods where I’m semi-comatose and unwilling to do anything. That’s a pretty good sign that I’m going to burn out real soon, so actually thinking about my work/relaxation split and planning it out instead of just doing whatever comes up is getting pushed to the top of my priority list.

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?

In a state of flux at the moment, but I expect to get my supervisor’s feedback on my thesis prospectus draft at some point this week and everything will be about getting that done about six seconds after it arrives.

Until that arrives, I’m doing some blog posts and reading some books and working on a handful of stories.

What’s inspiring me this week?

To my considerable shame, the most recent Pirates of the Caribbean film. Not because it’s any kind of great cinematic triumph – at best, it’s competent and better than the last two films – but it ends at a really interesting point and I kept thinking about the consequences of that on the way home. Somewhere along the line it became a short story idea.

What part of my project an I avoiding?

Double-checking my referencing system. UQ uses a different referencing style than I’m used to, plus there’s the addition of electronic referencing systems that weren’t really a thing back when I was last doing this. The result is a 5,000 word draft where I’m not completely confident that things are referenced correctly and I really need to sit down and manually check every single thing in my bibliography until I’ve internalised the MLA style.

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?

Catching up on the thesis prospectus after much of the last week was eaten up by a virus. I’ve worked out that I’m probably going to need to write a lot in order to get the 4,000 words I need, just because I process things as I go..

What’s inspiring me this week?

There’s a lot of argument about Master of None season 2 on my friends list this week, with the general consensus being that it’s got moments of brilliance but the final episodes let it down with some really unpleasant character development. I don’t disagree with that, but I also don’t think this show is about character arcs – of all the shows that make use of Netflix’s freedom from commercial constraints, Master of None is one of the few that eschews conventional narrative structures and embraces a more vignette-driven approach. It’s a show that takes a lot of chances simply because it can, including presenting its main character in an incredibly un-empathetic light.

What part of my project an I avoiding?

Weekly planning has fallen by the wayside a bit with the virus, but I need to remember that time spent planning in advance will save me time rather than wasting it.