There are currently 38 unread emails sitting in my inbox, a component part of 86 emails left in the inbox overall. The oldest dates back to September 12th and I barely remember September at this point.
My comfort zone is keeping the unread email under 10, and not leaving things in the inbox at all.
The drinks coaster on my desk is starting to feel appropriate.
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?
My major goal this week is landing the second chapter of my exegesis draft and officially hitting the 50% done phase of the critical side of my thesis. It’s slowed me down a little because it’s a gear-change part of the chapter–l’ve got to take the arguments I’ve been setting up and apply it to actual series works. This is the bit that I find tricky about theory–I can apply it to my own work easily enough, but always feel dicey about using it to critique other people’s creative products.
What’s inspiring me this week?
I’m going to split this answer in two this week. On the creative side of things, I finally sat down and watched Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse this week, and verily, it’s a damned awesome film that gets better the more I poke at it and explore how it was made. For me, it’s one of those films that really brings home the power of having a unified theme–everyone’s motivations in the film, whether hero or villain, seems to revolve around the idea of family and loss, and the contrasting ways they react to that is part of the appeal.
On the more practical side, Tobias Buckell’s post about intentionally dropping his daily wordcount goal down to 500 is a great, though-provoking post about what productivity really looks like. Incredibly well-timed, too, given that my brain is starting to whir into a faster-faster-faster-catch-up-catch-up-catch-up mode after all the recent disruptions to my process.
What action do I need to take?
I did my monthly checkpoint for November and outlined ten major projects that hold my attention this month, ranging from writing goals (finish the exegesis draft, write a novella dubbed Project Thug), work goals (marking lands tomorrow), and household tasks.
Interestingly, a good chunk of those don’t have clear definitions and hard edges–I don’t really know what success looks like, how I’m going to achieve them, or what concerns impact upon my ability to work on them. Part of my goal for the week will be sitting down and doing a firm playbook for the coming months–clear project definitions, rough plans, breakdowns of prep that needs to take place.
I’ve been wearing my thesis hat a good deal through October, because there’s an official deadline to get an exegesis draft finished by November 30. It’s gotta be somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 words. My impulse is to aim for the middle, assuming some stuff is going in ’cause I missed it while I will pull out other things ’cause they don’t need to be there.
Meanwhile my supervisor stresses that I’ve met university requirements so long as the exegesis clocks in at 20,001, and pointedly suggests that that minimum viable length will be just fine given that I’m submitting next year.
My draft currently sits around 18,616 words, so I’m doing okay on the productivity front, but it’s also a stark reminder that there’s a big difference between word count and progress. It looks like I’m almost done on the surface, but the stuff that’s actually “rough draft” only makes up 11,519 words of it.
The rest is all random bits, theoretical chunks of a larger jigsaw where I still searching out the edge pieces. Short pieces that may or may not fit into the overall thesis structure, written out of order and frequently trying to lock down a particular idea or argument. It’s valuable to have them, but they won’t make sense if someone asks to read where my research is at.
A few months back, when I started this process, those segments counted as good progress. They were how I got the computer every morning and started typing new words. Doing everything I could to avoid starting with a blank page.
You can rack up a pretty good wordcount that way, but it takes more than that to become a narrative (and an exegesis is a narrative, telling the story of your research and process as you solve a particular problem).Those notes got me to the point where where I could start linking things up and figuring out what chapters should look like, effectively moving me out of first gear and getting on the highway.
The core of progress is always word count, but the type of wordcount that counts as progress is likely to shift across the lifespan of a project. I’m still locking down ideas and rough notes at this late stage, but they tend to be part of a daily braindump into a diary rather than occurring on the page.