The 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?

I’m setting aside the next weeks weeks to do rewrites on the Flotsam/Keith Murphy series, with the coming week focused on adding some scenes to  Exile in order to balance out the narrative–fleshing out a subplot that got truncated by the word-count limits back when I first wrote the series; adding in a little more scaffolding for the series based upon my PhD research.

At the same time, I’m trying to lock down the branding of the series on the cover and blurb front.

What’s inspiring me this week?

I spent the weekend reading both ReWork and It Doesn’t Have To Be Crazy At Work by owners of 37 Signals and the Signal-to-Noise blog, Jason Fried and Darren Hansson. They’re both short books, but they pack a wealth of information into a slim page-count, and there’s a definite philosophy at work that’s interesting to read.

They may be oriented towards business processes–and they’ve definitely been inspiring in terms of helping me clarify some stuff around my long-term ideas for Brain Jar–but there’s also something about the way they’re written that’s got me thinking about writing books and essays again. 

What action do I need to take?

My end-of-semester marking lands tomorrow at 4:00 PM, which means I need to start finding time in my daily schedule to read and assess a small pile of student work. The really important thing here will be starting early and getting small increments done every day, rather than trying to process everything in a two or three-day rush.

Unfortunately, embracing that daily process is hard, so I really need to monitor my habits and make sure it’s getting done.

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 thinking this will be my final week on the novella draft–there’s six scenes left that need to be fleshed out, maybe three days work at the current pace. Another two scenes that will need big rewrites due to choices made elsewhere in the story.

Depending on how things go, I may start the next project on the list–an urban fantasy thriller–while letting the finished draft lie fallow before the fine-tuning edit. 

What’s inspiring me this week?

I could refer you back to my post about Damon Suede’s Hothead from Tuesday on the fiction front for the book that’s got me most excited about writing at the moment. I keep dipping into a chapter here and there, breaking down the techniques employed–Suede spends a lot more time on the interiority of his characters than I tend to, and I’m intrigued by the way he keeps me interested as a reader. 

What action do I need to take?

I’ve been slowly adding things back into my daily routine of late. first, getting into a groove with fiction writing. Then I added a little thesis writing on top, and them some blogging /online writing after I’d established a thesis chain.

This week I think I’d like to start adding a little editing/redrafting to the daily routine, but I haven’t got any firm idea about how to track redrafting and build up a chain of successes. Figuring out how to do so is going to be a priority, if only so I can make a call about the sustainability of editing one project while drafting another. 

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 on the tail end of a novella draft at the moment–there’s three chapters left to right, then the “go through and fill in all the gaps” sweep where I’ll start tinkering with everything that needs to be done. Very much the tricky stage, because it’s wrapping up all the things that have been set-up in earlier chapters (I prefer set-up to conclusions. It’s more fun)

I’m also fleshing out some details for the project that will follow this novella, henceforth going under the working title Project Adelaide. At this stage, that largely means continuing my experiments with Damon Suede’s Verbalise approach and locking down a suite of tactical verbs for the major characters.

What’s inspiring me this week?

Designer Mike Monteiro appeared on my radar around a decade ago, courtesy of his Fuck You, Pay Me speech (which spoke to every freelancer’s heart). He’s a forthright, funny guy with a firm sense of belief in the value of his work, and now he’s written a book about the ethics of design–specifically User Experience design–and the ways in which bad design is currently fucking up the world.

Ruined by Design isn’t the first book about the problems with social media (among other things), but it’s one of the first I’ve read where their problems are tackled by a professional whose been immersed in the field and knows how the problems begin. Montiero’s ire is wide-spread, but of-focused on Twitter and CEO Jack Dorsey, courtesy of the fact that Montiero’s studio and Twitter were housed across the hall from one another in early days. 

The book is terrifying, but also eye-opening and brilliant and occasionally touched by hope that sometimes seems hard to come by when processing the state of the world. I will, no doubt, be writing a full-length post about the book eventually, but for now…oh my god, just read it 

What action do I need to take?

I’m rebuilding my ongoing process at the moment, after the long break after my dad’s death. The first stage was getting rough drafts back into my day, reigning in the impulse to “write all the thing right now” and get back to trusting that steady, regular work will add up faster than binge-writing and burning out (and it has. That novella up top? Little more than a zygote of an idea two weeks ago, and now it’s 20,000 words).

In process terms, this is the easy part. Now, after finishing my marking, I need to start grafting research, editorial, and business processes onto my day in order to start pushing things past the first draft stage. And this is where the so-much-to-do, so-little-time impulse really kicks in and encourages procrastination. Also, the part where I can’t rely on routine as much and need to make actual, hard decisions.

Which means I need to sit down and do a plan that is not 90% madness and ambition, but instead creates a to-do list from that final 10% that is actually achievable and necessary and actually-what-needs-to-get-done-around here. Take the decisions away, so I can just work my way along the list and be done with it.