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?

We said goodbye to one of our guinea pigs on Friday, after six weeks of tending to the poor, sick little guy. The coming week is largely about finding a new groove–both work spaces in the flat and daily schedules are going to change as a result of Pepe going over the rainbow bridge, and I’ll be searching for a new equilibrium.

On the docket this week is working on covers and copy for the August Short Fiction Lab release, getting a September release together for the series, and kicking off a new novella draft (hereby dubbed Project G). I’ll be typing up the second draft of Exile as well, slotting in the new details in the first act.

What’s inspiring me this week?

I’ve been feeling a little directionless on the writing and publishing front lately–I’d set up some plans at the start of the year and they’ve been largely derailed by a series of life rolls that have been flowing in since March. This has meant I’m working, but I’m not getting the feeling that I’m building towards something. Fortunately, Warren Ellis put out a new instalment of his Comics Train blog series where he thinks through what he’d like comics publishing to be (or, at least, what he’d like to be doing in comics publishing).

It was good to go back and read this, as it informed a whole bunch of my thinking in the early half of the year. It did a really good job of snapping me back into the headspace and thinking about the long-term for a stretch, which almost immediately put me into the mindset to start thinking of logical next steps.

What action do I need to take?

I need to prep release announcements for Short Fiction Lab 3, and spend a few hours teaching myself old-school analogue proofing marks ahead of the coming semester where we’re working on line-editing for editors.  It’s been nearly twenty years since I’ve done any line editing outside of track changes, and my skills are a little rusty on that front…

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?

All the last-minute things that need to be finalised before A White Cross Beside A Lonely Road goes live on the 31st, which includes the final proofs, uploading advances and sending them out, updating the back matter with a list of Short Fiction Lab releases thus far, and a handful of other small stuff. Once that’s finalised, I’ll be kicking off work on the Short Fiction Lab release for August, which is drafted and awaiting some last minute tweaks, and seems likely to go out under a new title. 

Around that, the usual mix of thesis writing and making slow progress on Project Rad and the Exile rewrite. 

What’s inspiring me this week?

The bulk of my reading this week involved The Artists Way, which proved to be more irritating than inspiring. I did find myself fascinated by the 99% Invisible podcast on sand and its importance to the modern world, which is loaded full of unexpected realisations that subtly adjust the way you look at the world.

Since it also involves criminal cartels murdering one another over sand, it proves to be a great resource for story ideas on top of that. 

What action do I need to take?

One of the thing that I noticed while prepping the pre-orders for the new release is the occasional pre-existing book that hasn’t been updated somewhere along the line (it was one of those jobs that got sidelined when my dad got sick earlier this year and I never got back to it).

It suggests I’m probably due an inventory audit, making sure the right versions of everything are in all the various stores and reviewing the backmatter in the current books to make sure it’s up-to-date.