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?
Toying with a short story and a couple of blog posts this week, but mostly I’m just trying to get back into a routine again. I spent the weekend revisiting my monthly and quarterly checkpoints, winnowing down the project list to a manageable number, and trying to get my apartment into a fit state of habitable living.
What’s inspiring me this week?
So I finally caught up with the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies movie after everyone recommended it earlier this year and, oh my, it is quite good. I loathed the book version of this, but transferring it to film overcomes a lot of my objections and who knew Lizzy and Darcy would be improved by being heavily armed and engaging in martial arts exchanges?
What part of my project an I avoiding?
Endings, in so many ways. I’ve got a novel draft that needs an ending and three separate short stories that are stalled at the final scene, which usually means there is less issues with the final scene than there are things that haven’t happened through the story that will make the ending work.
I’ve ended up taking a short, unscheduled break from writing newsletters over the last fourteen days. Regular GenrePunk Ninja transmissions will resume
Like many of you, I have good weeks and bad weeks on the writing front. This week has been rocky, and if
Welcome to GenrePunk Ninja supplemental, where I occasionally post foundational essays written before I launched the GenrePunk Ninja newsletter, especially if they’re
21 Responses
@Peter: man, endings is hard, yo. Is there a particular writer you admire for getting them right?
After the discussion last night (thanks again for that, man – meant a lot!) I hope the move back towards regular routine shows progress for you.
What am I working on this week?
Work on the commercial demo has begun! Woohoo! Continuing on with that, along with work on the tentpole animated series project, and spinning a personal project back up over the break. Also, continuing a month-long review and debrief of the year, with a goal of stripping back to the things that really matter.
What’s inspiring me this week?
In part, stripping away things that aren’t serving me any more, and boiling down to simplicity. I mentioned last week that I’d stumbled across the idea of Romanticism, which blew my mind a little as an underpinning connective tissue between a few different types of story or cultural myth I’d been digging. Any recommendations on reading more about that more than welcome!
Other than that, been digging more into the world of The Witcher, and enjoying the bleaker, more pessimistic/realist world view in there. That Czech sensibility!
What part of my project am I avoiding?
At the moment, a few annoying logistical loose ends that I don’t want to leave dangling around in 2016. Things like dentist appointments, and fixing up my post office box mailing address. Time consuming, annoying.
Ah, the annoying things of life…they always take up precious writing time, which is why stripping back to the the things that really matter is such an important exercise. Congratulations on getting started on the commercial demo, Kevin.
I’m interested to see how you start distilling romanticism for your purposes.
Hooray for the demo moving forward! And sounds like the month-long review and debrief for the year would be a super helpful moving into 2017. What kind of things do you look at for that?
Ah, those pesky self-care appointments–I’ve been trying to track down those things, too. It’s so hard to find time for them, yet in the end, they’re important for keeping everything else flowing smoothly. ^_^
Endings are always challenging for me too, Peter. Hope you can get yours sorted out soon. For the novel, have you thought about doing a chapter-by-chapter breakdown? That might reveal something that you’ve overlooked.
Here’s my Sunday Circle.
I have spreadsheets that break the action and character arcs down by scene. When I’m this stuck, it’s usually something a little more structural and fundamental that’s gone wrong 🙂
whoa! You are super organised! I’m sure it’ll come to you.
Congratulations on all the anthology news!
Hooray for the anthology and news about the longer manuscript! Like you say, there are so many ups and downs, one can only ride them out as best one can. (Though I doubt disappointing news is ever met with perfect zen-like peace, at least for me! ^_^) I have a habit of letting myself either wallow in self-pity or have a spoonful of marshmellow Fluff (which I don’t normally let myself have), but if I take the Fluff, I can’t self-pity anymore! It’s usually a fun, silly way to jumpstart a way forward. ^_^
As for family visiting and time constraints, sounds like you’ve got your plan in order for moving forward. I always try to remember at times like these that being with family and friends–as much as it’s a disruption to the physical writing–is kind of the fuel of life and of future fiction. Sometimes it’s important to immerse oneself, like you’ve done, at least for a little while! 😀
yep – you can’t write if you don’t participate in life!
@Peter: December is proving to be a tough productively for a bunch of people I know! Hope this week goes a bit smoother, and that some of the knotty endings work themselves out. 🙂
I’m late again this week, but I promise I’ll comment on everybody’s posts tomorrow! I just knew if I didn’t get this up today, I’d probably flake out again this week. XP
Post is here!
better late than never Maggie!
Oh, have fun with all the Christmas crafting! It’s nice just to play.
It definitely is! 😀 It’s a nice alternative to written imaginative work, having something you can see and touch!
Oh, P&P&Z was so much more fun than I expected, and there were some scenes which felt… deserved. As if the characters had lived through these scenes so often in so many versions that Just Once it was right that they got to break out into violence.
What I’m working on:
– Setting aside time to read manuscripts and make sketches.
– The novella.
– Website, apparently. It was too big to deal with for too long and then suddenly this morning I snapped and it all seems clear.
What’s inspiring me:
– Driving! Last week Kevin asked if I could use that time with audiobooks, etc, and I probably could have set my computer to read out manuscripts or something. But I didn’t and it was just WONDERFUL. Two whole hours every other day of listening to 4ZZZ and half-thinking up schemes and projects and letting problems process in the background, rather than avoiding them through work. It almost makes me think it would be worth getting my own car again – my parents take this one and go home tomorrow.
– Patreon, unexpectedly. I had a bad reaction to it the first few days, very stressed. And then suddenly I realised it gave me all this permission to make things because it would be fun to do them and give them to people.
– I had a bit of an epiphany today (related to the website). A friend pointed out two recommended options, calling them the easy way and the “long hard stupid” way. And I realised that I should probably limit my inclination to do things the long hard stupid way to core tasks (art and writing) and be efficient when it comes to peripheral/admin activities. The phrase, it turns out, came from this talk – a lot of it doesn’t sit great with how I work, but the first few paragraphs do. I’m not against efficiency per se, but there is also so much good in doing things the long hard stupid way: all sorts of treasures to be dragged out of side paths and used if not for this project then for another one. So I’ll keep learning ‘better’ ways to do things (keyboard shortcuts in Photoshop! who knew!), but I’ll stop beating myself up about my tendency to follow rather roundabout paths to get creative work done. But not the admin.
What I’m avoiding:
Not a whole lot. Some things get crowded out, but on the whole doing more seems to be making more happen.
Oh man, I *love* audiobooks. They’re fantastic for doing those around-the-house tasks like tidying up and doing dishes, too. If you haven’t read Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy yet, they are *fantastic* audiobooks, as is Soul of an Octopus and Smoke Gets In Your Eyes (both memoir/non-fiction), and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime (mainstream, dark but brilliantly complex POV). Fantastically fun, all of them.
I really struggle with audiobooks! I love reading aloud/being read to because you can stop and pursue etymologies and related stories, do the voices, ask for reprises etc, and I like informative podcasts because they’re shorter than books and if I fade out I don’t miss narrative.
It’s true it’s challenging when the mind wanders! I’m pretty addicted to the “back 15 seconds” button on my phone. But it’s close enough to reading aloud for me most of the time. ^_^
I’m a bit of a fan of doing things the “long, hard, stupid” way, too. It’s often where the adventures start. But admin – yep, straight down the main road for that stuff 🙂