The Sunday Circle: What Are You Working On 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 having one of those weeks where I’m largely following my nose on the writing front, but I suspect the next five days will be spent drafting a new short story (Project Hook) and trying to get my attention back on the thesis after nearly three weeks away from the project. 

What’s inspiring me this week?

I read Shastra Deo’s debut poetry collection, The Agonist, earlier this week and immediately started taking notes about things to pay attention too in the work. There’s a precision to the language that really lifts of the page, but it’s the deeper entwining of themes that really carry thing–Deo’s got an interest in the body that’s exacting and anatomical, but her interests are filtered through a pop-cultural obsession that lends the work a real speculative undercurrent that frequently breaks the surface. In another timeline, published by a publisher that wasn’t a university press with literary sensibilities, I could have seen The Agonist making a run at spec fic awards like the Rhysling.

Basically, at it’s best, The Agonist reminded me a lot of one of my favourite short story writers, Caitlin Kiernan. The two writers share a similar interest in rendering the body strange and using language to evoke the uncanny, and I suspect that anyone’s whose a fan of Kiernan will likely dig Deo’s work. 

What action do I need to take?

Getting back into the habit of turning off the internet. As ever, it’s crept back into my daily routine over the last few weeks–right there as I start the day, the first thing I see when I load the computer (because I forgot to shut down the browser before logging off). I’m not necessarily wasting time on it–mostly, I’m clearing email or writing blog posts or doing other secondary-business-tasks–but they are secondary business tasks. I need to remove it from the first half of my day for a stretch, and get my focus back onto writing prose and getting books ready.