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 still searching for a regular writing rhythm at the moment–one of our guinea pigs is still sick and in need of care/vet visits on a semi-regular basis. This means I’m keeping my ambitions relatively contained: catching up on my thesis draft, which is about two thousand words behind where it should be, and getting a new Short Fiction Lab instalment uploaded for a release later this month. 

What’s inspiring me this week?

Elspeth Probyn’s Blush: Faces of Shame is a book I’ve recommended a few times before, but I revisited it towards the middle of the week when I realised I was reluctant to resume thesis writing. It’s got absolutely nothing to do with my thesis topic, but Probyn is one of those academic writers who doesn’t sound like an academic–it’s very much a research story that weaves between the personal and the critical, anchoring concepts and epiphanies against meaningful moments in life rather than leaving them as abstract concepts. 

The result is a book that is undeniably academic, but fascinating outside of the small field of people for whom this is a topic of research interest. In short, it’s a vision of academic writing worth aspiring too, even if it’s level of ambition is damned difficult to achieve.

What action do I need to take?

I’m about halfway through my current Quarterly Plan, but the areas of focus I’ve set up for the next month aren’t a good fit for the way life has played out. I need to do a revisit and update some of the projects listed there–either because they’re now redundant or no longer viable with discretionary cash getting directed to vet bills for the next stretch. 

This has knock-on effects, as I tend to get lax with monthly, weekly, and daily plans when the quarterly document isn’t trustworthy, so I’d like to go in and adjust. My current rule is that I can’t add new things to the list before the quarterly plan comes due, but I can definitely cut the stuff that no longer needs to be there, delay some of the stuff that is no longer possible, and adjust the stuff that needs to play out in a slightly different way.