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 start heading into QWC once a week to work on GenreCon this week, in addition to doing my last full week of shifts at the Queensland Health gig and catching up with friends through most of Monday, so I’m actually doing very little creative work in the next seven days. A little short story tinkering will probably take place, but mostly I’m focused on rethinking most of my planning systems to account for the fact that I’ll be working from home a awful after January 31. This brings with it an incredibly high potential for procrastination, and I’d really like to lock down any habits that contribute to that and nip them in the bud.
What’s inspiring me this week?
I picked up a copy of Elmore Leonard’s Fire in the Hole and Other Stories, which is best-known these days for including the titular novelette that eventually became the TV show, Justified. I’m a fan of Leonard’s novels – he’s an great stylists who has a real knack for character and dialogue – but they kinda pale in comparison to what he does at shorter word counts.
What’s really interesting is watching…well, not a formula, but a definite recurring motif in terms of the way he likes to end things…get rolled out alongside an ironic final statement in story after story, to the point where you can predict it happening. It should be incredibly irritating, but it’s become the thing that I really enjoyed looking for.
What part of my project an I avoiding?
I’m intentionally avoiding writing projects for the next week, but I’ve been unintentionally avoiding a bunch of writing-adjacent work like signing contracts and processing email. I really should set aside a few hours to clear the decks before Friday.
