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 lost my way a little with the second act of Float over the last week. Lots of forward progress, but not a lot of direction. Will be spending today trying to re-plan a little, so that I can hit the ground running on the latter half of the second act when I head to write club on Monday. With luck, I an make it to the end of the second act.
What’s inspiring me this week?
I went to see La Boite’s production of A Streetcar Named Desire on Friday night and it copletely blew away pretty much everything I’ve seen at movies and in theatres over the last twelve months. I thought I knew Streetcar pretty well – I’d seen the movie, read the play, and gone to two or three other productions of the play – but this production basically turned everything up to eleven. It was an absolutely intense, visceral exerpeience, and it took me a good three hours to calm down afterwards.
This wasn’t helped by discovering an academic journal about Tennessee Williams’ with a bunch of papers that pretty much blew my mind, starting with “hey, lets take a look at Stanley’s character through the filter of PTSD and how that’s present in the play without ever being mentioned.”
Nor was it helped by the person I saw the play with reminding me of the Simpsons’ episode about Streetcar turned into a musical, when I was suddenly reminded by exactly how dark the Simpsons’ humour could get.
It’s nearly 48 hours later and the production is still being processed, and it still lights me up with electricity every time I think about it. So incredibly good.
What part of my project an I avoiding?
I fell out of the habit of putting together scene notes before writing last week, returning to my habitual pantser approach, and it immediately made the whole process much, much harder than it should have been. This week’s goal is to get back to the habit of planning scenes out a little before I write them, since it does seem to speed up the writing process immeasurably.
