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?

Last week got derailed by illness by Wednesday, but I still managed to progress a bunch of projects (and resume one that has languished for a while) before that. This means that the coming week shares a similarly crowded to-do list, and has the same goal: drive towards the mid-point of my post-apocalyptic buddy-cop story (while also working on an older project, Warhol-Sleeping, which found it’s feet in the week just gone).

The main goal in the coming week remains time based: ten hours devoted to the buddy cop story; ten hours devoted to Warhol-Sleeping; ten hours devoted to preparing the conference paper for January.

What’s inspiring me this week?

My research reading this week has revolved around Nina Auerbach’s Our Vampires, Ourselves–an academic work looking at the way Vampire narratives shift to match the spirit of the age. I’m about halfway through, at the point where she starts looking at the ways in which Dracula represents the shift away from Vampires as narratives of connection through to narratives of isolation and domination, but it’s giving me fresh eyes when looking at a whole bunch of contemporary stories and how they’re using the vampire as a metaphor.

There are, also, a half-dozen notes for when I start writing my own vampire stories based on the research as well, and I find myself itching to do something with them.

What action do I need to take?

The proofing documents were the ones to take the big hit with last week’s illness, so they maintain their position here–I really need to go through them and make the changes. It’s probably time to make that the first thing I do every day, even if it’s just a half-hour of work.