The Sunday Circle: What Are You Working On This Week?

It’s been a long, complicated week, as they tend to be at this time of the year. New Years is coming, people go on holiday, and managing your focus is a necessity if you want to get things done. If you’ve been feeling the drag on you projects this week, come join me for this week’s instalment of:

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 hit the halfway point on my conference paper this week, which means I’m in pretty good shape to get the second half done by the end of December and allow myself a nice rewriting window before it’s due. The main goal this week is doing a re-read of the sample books I’m talking about, making notes with reference to the key things I’m arguing.

I also broke the deadlock I was in with the final act of Warhol Sleeping over the last few days, largely by doing rough scene sketches of the new scenes before I try to write them. This week’s goal will be writing a “this is not my beautiful house” chapter, leading up to a big action sequence in the next chapter.

What’s inspiring me this week?

It’s that time of the year where I re-read productivity and process-based books, familiarising myself with the a basics. Work Clean has featured prominently, and I’ve been revisiting The Weekend Novelist for its approach to storyboarding a novel, which is great when I get really stuck on something and just want to get down a rough draft of the bad version before I do the good one. 

What action do I need to take?

With the Short Fiction Lab series running and using a unified design, I’ve been debating whether to re-brand the existing short story collections to fit in with the style. I’m running through different iterations of the original design (pictured below), trying to find something that fits, but I feel like I’ve been staring at it for too long. 

At some point, I need to pick one and go for it–especially since I’m working on the print edition in the coming weeks–but overcoming the decision paralysis is hard.