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?
Everything in my life ground to a halt while I focused on clearing marking of decks this week, so this week will be spent reconnecting with the three major projects on my plate: Hell Track, the current short story draft, and my thesis chapter. I’m keeping my new word goals relatively low – I’ll be happy if I get 500 to 1000 a day – but I’m aiming to spend about two hours a day on each re-reading what’s already been done, making notes, and generally getting back up to speed after a few weeks of heavy distraction.
What’s inspiring me this week?
I’ve just marked a whole bunch of student essays where they analysed aspects of craft in the novels we’re reading this semester, and there’s some of them that have sent me back to The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Gone Girl, and Venetia with fresh eyes to take a really close look at the minutia of the craft. More and more, I find myself fascinated with Gaiman’s craftsmanship, in particular – there’s a real care with the way he builds his novel and the images used within.
What action do I need to take?
The aforementioned feeling of things grinding to a halt has taken it’s toll. It’s largely the result of the mid-semester break at uni disrupting routines and the aforementioned marking eating up time (both in the actual hours spent marking, and in the energy spent managing the stress around it). I’ve been setting the goal of “get back into a routine” for weeks now, without being specific for what that means. In hindsight, I should be specific: I really need to do a thorough weekly plan, instead of just reviewing specifics on a Sunday, then be mindful of where I want to spend my time. From there, I really need to do a half-hour daily check-in to kick off my weekday mornings and make sure everything is running in sync.
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
8 Responses
Peter: were you able to go through a weekly plan today?
Your suggestion in the past to spend half an hour to manage people doing work for you is an excellent one – can’t remember which book you said that came from now. I’ve wound that into a revised daily schedule taking into account the Tiny One’s current sleep schedule.
Hope you’re able to get back on track – I definitely relate to both sides of the coin after the chaos of the post-GDC flu.
It’s scheduled for Monday. I tend to have a lot of stuff on through Sunday these days, and keeping the planning there out of habit was making it easier to avoid altogether.
What am I working on this week?
This week is marketing activities (including post-GDC follow-ups), some pickup recording for the film, and working on narrative skills building.
What’s inspiring me this week?
I’ve started working on a programming side project to build some skills for the survival job/tech consulting, and it’s really drawing me in to just push it a little bit further each day. I’ve hit this same surge of passion with side programming projects in the past, and I’m trying to find a way to steer that energy over into writing work, which I find comparably daunting. (which I suppose is to be expected, given I don’t have university training & a whole lot of practical experience with writing)
The other thing that’s really charging me at the moment is the combination of a good night’s sleep finally (our daughter has been waking us up somewhere between 2AM and 4AM every night for the last week) and hitting the ‘must do’ stuff today with a full day working on voice acting.
What action do I really need to take?
Now that I’m half-way through the GDC follow-ups, I need to get the number of auditions getting out the door up this week to start bringing in more money.
How did GDC go in terms of networking? Did you hit all the goals you’d set yourself?
Monster virus got in the way a little, but I had all but a couple of meetings – so I’d call that a success.
The downside was losing the Seattle leg of the trip to sickness, and having to cancel all the meetings I had there. That _sucked_.
Sympathies for the early wakeups! It seems like Bug goes through that periodically, too–he’s actually just wrapped up one such session, perhaps because we just measured him and he’d grown a whole inch in the past month. O.O
Loved The Ocean at the End of the Lane and just finished Gone Girl–which I adored the beginning of, but then felt lost some of its trajectory in the second half. I’d be super interested in some of the lessons you’re teaching and discussing with your students about them!
What am I working on this week? Still chugging away on all the brain-work Draft 2 will require to get off the ground and into the air. At times it feels like I’m just treading water, but important (and previously ignored) details of character and plot are being worked out at long last, so it is moving forward. Just slowly. By the end of the week, I’d like to be summary drafting the new scenes that need to be inserted into the big overview draft (and adding their cards into the stack of plot cards).
What’s inspiring me this week? Just finished reading Blind Descent by James M. Tabor, which was one of my favorite reads so far this year. Just…epic. Loved it, and learned a ton about extreme spelunking. And started plowing into Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion by Elizabeth L. Cline, which has made me want to get back into sewing my own clothes. Also just watched the first episode of World War II in Color on Netflix, and it seems like a fantastic way to fill in all those info-gaps I feel like I have when it comes to all the intricacies of that period of conflict. Really interesting, and somehow, more horrifying for being in color–it just makes it that much more…present. Oh! And just started A Rage in Harlem by Chester Himes, whose writing I fell in love with after reading If He Hollers, Let Him Go a year or so ago. I’m really enjoying these streamlined short novels.
What action do I need to take this week? I need to get back into reading regularly during weeknights–Jessica Jones, and a few other shows had subtly slipped into our nightly reading sessions and overrun them–so I really need to make reading a priority again and probably take a look at what I’m reading right now, and what I think I can finish by the end of the month.
AUGH! I’m a terrible Circle friend, Maggie. I completely missed htis last week.
How did you go with the regular night reading?