The Sunday Circle: What Are You Working On This Week?

PETERMBALL Sunday Circle

Sunday Circle Banner

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 finally at a point where the exegesis draft only needs half my daily writing time, rather than all of it, so I’m going to try and kickstart a fiction project this way. My goal is to get a few words down on a novella draft, and plot out the novella that I’ll be writing after it.

What’s inspiring me this week?

Loretta Chase’s Mr Impossible, a historical romance about a bookish widower and an irresponsible English nobleman chasing across Egypt to track down the rapscallions who have made off with said widower’s brother. It’s incredibly solid romance, reminding me a lot of the sheer glee I take in Anne Gracie’s work, but anyone whose a fan of the Brandon Fraser Mummy films is going to recognise this dynamic and thrill at the characters.

For me, it also got me thinking about the notes for a planetary romance series I’ve been meaning to write for years, in which a character named Mrs Northbrook investigates wrongdoing on Steampunk Mars.

What action do I need to take?

I need to go through my thesis draft and check all the references, then compile the bibliography. I’ve been putting this one off for a while now, but the time has come.

Notebook Geekery — the Special Editions

PETERMBALL Adventures in Lifestyle Hacking

My notebook preferences are deeply entrenched and codified. For example, I use a Leuchtturm1917 (preferably pink and unlined) for drafting and a Leuchtturm1917 Grid Ruled (of alternating colours) as a bullet journal. The colour switch on the journals lets me remember bullet journal “eras” when I’m looking back, while the pink drafting notebook frequently amuses me because I’m generally writing something horror related.

Brainstorming typically happens in project-specific notebooks, usually soft-cover Cahier Moleskins that can be colour-coded to different projects. Pocket notebooks will typically be Field Notes (I’m obsessed) or a Moleskine softcover.

I’m slowly experimenting with larger hardcover moleskins as project-specific brainstorming, especially for series works, as I’m rapidly discovering that certain projects are filling notebooks at a rate of knots. I’ve got three for my PhD novellas, and could well fill another three before I’m done.

All these decisions are largely made so I can quickly scan a row of notebooks on the desk and grab the one I need right now. Rather than looking for notes, I can search for a specific colour and size. It speeds things up.

Recently, I’ve broken ranks with this and started using fancier notebooks for very specific projects that I know will run long-term.

The smaller notebook in the image above, featuring art by Kathleen Jennings and produced for the Brisbane Writers Festival a few years back, is now the repository of frequently-checked-publishing details.

For instance, there’s page devoted to the standard price-points I use for Brain Jar Press so I don’t have to prevaricate about “How much can I charge for this project?” Instead, I just check the length and genre against the grid, and list the price.

There’s another page that breaks down certain price-points based on country. And another where I’m breaking down my editorial workflow, so I can quickly construct a checklist for each project and make sure I’m not skipping a step. The mostrecently filled in pages list the things I need to remember when setting up a cover, and Photoshop tools I’m not yet used to reaching for instinctively.

To put it in blogging terms, it’s evergreen content that I’m going to refer back to for years to come. Ergo, a notebook with cover art and some really nice paper quality, easily distinct from all the others.

The other notebook—picked up cheap a few years back, because JRR Tolkien-style art applied to Game of Thrones amused me—features a similar archive of research notes and key take-aways from my more in-depth research journals. Space where I can do quick reviews of core principles while simultaneously serving as an index if I need to get more in depth with what I learned.

These are the shorts of notes I keep meaning to transfer into digital storage, but there’s never enough time to do that in the day.

Milestone

PETERMBALL Works in Progress

Word count on my exegesis draft ticked past the minimum viable word count last night, although I’m still a few thousand words away from having a final draft. Which puts me behind the self-imposed deadline I set up back in April, but well ahead of my last attempt at writing one of these where I stalled out five thousand words in and ultimately dropped out of the RHD program rather than continue.

There was a point where it felt like that was a perfectly logical choice this time, as well. My imposter syndrome is strong with theoretical writing, and the fear that I will expose myself for an idiot triggers my social anxiety something horrible.

Fortunately, my beloved was there to suggest it might be time to check in with my GP and have a chat about how my mental health is going, and my GP promptly set me up with a plan to pull things back from the brink.

I’m still nervous about writing this damn thing, but not paralysed by indecision and fear.

Next deadline isn’t until early January, but that’s where I need to hand over something way cleaner than what I’ve got now, with all the referencing done properly and the chapters making sense. Still, after nearly six weeks of this eclipsing everything else going on in my life, it’s nice to have the to think about fiction a little more.