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 part-way through marking at the moment, which means the bulk of this week will be spent grading and critiquing about 72,000 words of student fiction before a Thursday deadline. I’m averaging about 12,000 words of marking a day at the moment, so I’m more-or-less on target.

I’m usually grabbing an hour or so for other work over coffee, which are being spent working on Project Rad and the Exile rewrite. Mostly, at this stage, working by hand, brain dumping everything I know about both projects and what the stories are actually about, figuring out when scenes I’ve written need to be resequenced or shifted, and generally having fun with things.

What’s inspiring me this week?

I picked up Amistead Maupin’s Tales of the City after watching a few episodes of the Netflix miniseries. I’m fascinated by the structure of the novel, which features self-contained vignettes that gradually weave together but still have the potential to stand alone. The structure is a legacy of the books origins as a newspaper serial, getting printed as a regular column on the back page of the San Francisco Chronicle. 

I wish I’d read this a little earlier in my life. I remember being curious what fiction-using-webcomic models might look like ten or fifteen years ago, and even did a short-lived project where I explored the idea, but couldn’t quite wrap my head around it. Now, I’m pretty sure it would look something Maupin’s work, which is basically a prose comic strip that builds up narratives through daily repetition of themes/characters. 

What action do I need to take?

I’ve stopped doing my daily plan and heartbeat log on Instagram because the one-two punch of guinea pigs in surgery and long days of marking made for a heavily disrupted week. Really need to get back to both on Monday–I’m feeling the lack focus starting to get to me and things like checking email or doing exercises to combat back pain are slipping through the cracks.