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?

Writing is top of the agenda this week, after the bulk of last week was taken up by grading papers. A good chunk of my between-marking downtime was spent working my way through issues on the Project Stairwell draft, creating a to-do list of things to hit when I started drafting again.

The story is an interesting challenge because it’s really four seperate mini-stories, three of which have their own micro-story nested within them. Getting it right means keeping the reader interested in each part, and seamlessly transitioning from one to the other. I haven’t quite cracked that yet, but I’ll get there. 

With luck and focus, the coming week will also see me finish a chapter in my thesis. 

What’s inspiring me this week?

I read two Mary Robinette Kowal novels this week–her first, Shades of Milk and Honey, and her recent Hugo winner, The Calculating Stars. Both were the kinds of books I stayed up until 2:00 AM to finish, and both me sent me over tot he internet to revisit some of the truly outstanding and mind-blowing advice Kowal has posted over the years (hint: start with the what puppetry taught me about writing episode of writing excuses). 

What action do I need to take?

I need to sit down and do a new Quarterly and Monthly checkpoint this week–they were on the list for last week, but got eclipsed by some of the short-term deadlines. This is a state that could well continue, and I’m hitting the part of the year where lots of different things feel urgent. Outsourcing my thinking to to a more detailed plan that tells me what actually is urgent will help keep me on track. 

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?

Right now I’m in the phase of Project Stairwell where I need to a) tell a really good ghost story within the context of the story, and then b) deliver on said ghost story when I send characters in to figure out what’s really going on.

What’s inspiring me this week?

Do Anything Vol 1: Jack Kirby Ripped My Flesh, a collection of Warren Ellis’ columns about the history of the comic book field, filtered through Jack Kirby as a nexus point and the conceit that Ellis has Jack Kirby’s Robot Head on his desk and…look, this is one of those books that’s impossible to explain. Ellis is one of those writers who gets interested in forms, and what happens when you break them down and rebuild them again.

It’s the kind of work that makes me want t dig out my copy of A Thousand Plateau’s and start talking about the difference between single-root and rhizome narratives and how Ellis applies that idea to non-fiction and history. Also the kind of work that makes you want to take the advice of the title–the recognition that nobody is really asking you to fill a comic book or a novel or a web-column, they’re just asking you to fill a container–and within that, you can do anything. Ergo, it becomes a book that fills my head with possibilities.

I am incredibly sad that there is no volume 2.

What action do I need to take?

I revamped my website this week, giving it a long-overdue fresh coat of paint and setting up some back-end tools that I’ve needed for a while (specifically, the ability to create proper landing pages without the other website distractions floating about).

Naturally, this now means there’s a veritable army of small jobs that need to be done: updated links in the back-matter of books, standardising some of the language and approach; re-uploading books into the new library set-up; actually going over to BrainJarPress.com and transforming it into a fully operational Death Star before the company hits its second birthday.

The latter has been on my list forever, and part of the revamp was getting to a point where it uses the same toolkit as my personal site to avoid duplication of work and encourages duplication of content. It still, alas, needs me to do the work of transferring information over and revamping the design there…