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?

Incredibly busy week, with some family medical stuff on top, so I’m looking to lock down as much planning as I can until the schedule opens up a bit. I’ll be laying out a couple of short story ideas to noodle with, and working through the next sequence for the WIP.

What’s inspiring me this week?

I did not mean to watch The Sapphires, but my partner has been laid up with a pinched nerve and it was her sick-day viewing of choice.  This is a film that’s working through a well-trod formula a band-trying-to-make-it in a sixties setting, but it’s very aware of the new elements it brings to the table and uses them to its best advantage. Incredibly well-written film that’s layering all sorts of stories and issues up against one another in the narrative to really good effect.

What action do I need to take?

I’m working on a short story at the moment, 8 Minutes of Usable Daylight, and the bulk of my weekly writing time has been spent circling around the final scene which never feels quite right. This is usually a sign that something’s not working earlier in the story and I need some better set-up, so I should take some time to go through the draft and start looking for better endings.

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’ve got a couple of projects moving forward this week, but the one that needs the most thought is the draft for a novella called Warhol Sleeping. It’s the oldest thing on my big list of unfinished projects, and about half done, so I’m giving myself a week of tinkering to see a) whether it can be salvaged as a project (it was originally a cyberpunk-ish thing, drafted in the era before smartphones) and b) whether I can transform the suite of vignettes into a narrative arc within a reasonable amount of time.

What’s inspiring me this week?

I’ve been reading Mary Robinette Kowal’s Word Puppets short story collection, which covers a lot of career ground (early stories to later works) and shows her progression as a writer. I’m a fan of Kowal’s work in general, but an even bigger fan of the way she unpacks progress online and in workshops/the Writing Excuses podcast, and you can see the kind of thinking she talks about at work in the craftsmanship of her stories.

What action do I need to take?

I’ve got my next short story collection formatted and the meta-data and sales spiel is all written up. That just leaves final proofing, some minor tinkering with the original stories, and the authors notes on all the stories on the to-do list. The scheduled release date is the end of May, so I need to pick up the pace on these this week.

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 down to the final scene on the story I started last week, so I’m looking to get that written around some thesis work in the coming days. Hell Track has been a little slower to resume work on, but I’m going to break out a notebook and start tackling all the hiccups which have emerged over the last week.

What’s inspiring me this week?

I’ve been reading Rick Remender’s run on Uncanny Avengers over the last week, which does an incredible job of blending the history of two Marvel franchises and coming up with some really high-level, cosmic plots that still feel grounded in the people. I generally like the Avengers least when they’re tackling big, cosmic-level plots involving time travel, and I’ve liked the X-Men comics least when they’re dealing with time-travelling, unknowable villains like Apocalypse. Remender takes both and fuses them into something incredible, while keeping the action grounded in the foibles of the team.

What action do I need to take?

Chaos has taken over my desk over the last month as it became the dumping ground for things that did not have a home in the flat, and the available work space has shrunk to the size of the keyboard. I really need to start sorting things and either finding homes or tossing things away, because it’s becoming harder and harder to work there.