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 around a new story draft about boxing, crime-lords, and French colonies on a Burroughs-esque mars around 1920 or so. I’ve already got the first few scenes down and just started winding my way towards the real meat of the story, which means it’s probably going to be on the long side.

What’s inspiring me this week?

I spent a good chunk of Saturday inhaling Caitlin Kiernan’s Agents of Dreamland novella, which is fricken’ incredible in the way that about 99% of Kiernan’s short fiction work tends to be. It’s basically Lovecraft filtered through layers of conspiracy and espionage paranoia, but that sort of description never really does Kiernan’s work justice. It’s less about what the story is about, and more about the mood that’s being evoked.

What part of my project an I avoiding?

I really need to do a final sweep of the short-story rewrite I did last week and get it into submission shape. . I’ve had the final print-out sitting on my desk, needing to be proofed, for about two or three days but just keep scheduling other things ahead of it.

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?

The white-boards are basically running my life at the moment, keeping me focused on shifting priorities. I’ve got an application going in Tuesday and my thesis synopsis going in Friday, but I also want to get some short fiction moving again. Top of the list is a rewrite of a story that kinda started out as a version of Hills Like White Elephants on Mars, took a left turn through Film Noir, and now seems to be heading somewhere else entire.

What’s inspiring me this week?

Abstract, the Netflix documentary series about design and designers. 40 minutes at a time, with an individual designer as the subject paired with a different documentary director, with results that range from the brilliant (the episodes of illustration, architecture, photography, and typography) to the interesting (the episode about Nike shoe designer Tinker Hatfield) to the blah (the episode about Chrysler and car design), but it’s always got something in the episode you can take away as a creative.

And, honestly, if you can watch the episode about Bjarke Ingels without wanting to move into his figure eight apartment complex (or, at least, write a story set there), you are doing far, far better than I am.

What part of my project an I avoiding?

I’ve got two papers that need to be summarised for the PhD, which I’ve been putting off because they’re dense and complex and not as much fun as some of the other theory I’ve been reading. I really need to set aside a couple of hours to struggle with stuff that’s going to be much harder to understand and get it clear in my head.