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?
Should hit the mid-point of Float later today, which has been a fun experiment in trying to replicate the quick cuts of a good-guy-infiltrates-while-bad-guy-prepares movie beat into prose. Lots of dead bad guys, and the secondary antagonist gets wiped out in the name of bringing the primary protagonist into view.
That means that the bulk of this week will go into the next major sequence, which is basically the move away from simple revenge into the larger plot. I am looking forward to this.
What’s inspiring me this week?
I’ve been heavy into the crime fiction this week, for various reasons. The best of the things that I’ve read was George Pelecanos’ short story collection, The Martini Shot, which has all the best traits of Pelecanos’ work, but also contained some surprises.
Pelecanos spent a good chunk of time working as a writer on the Wire, and he does a lot of really tight, voice-driven narratives that really nail the place he’s writing about (usually Washington DC). But the novella that gives The Martini Shot it’s title is basically a crime story unravelling on the TV set of a police procedural TV show and seeing Pelecanos synthesis his experiences behind the scenes with his eye for setting detail is kinda incredible.
What part of my project an I avoiding?
I had to stretch to figure this one out this week. For the first time in a long while, I seem to be in a place where I’ve got all my priorities running in sync, and the balance between writing new drafts, redrafting, and writing-adjacent tasks like blogging and email feels workable and doesn’t leave me with that feeling that I’m not doing enough.
Which is good, ’cause now it’s fine-tuning stuff. This week, sitting down and properly bench-marking the progress of Float so that I can be reasonably sure I’ll have a draft that can be turned over to beta-readers in early January. I’m about 90% sure that the current process will get me there, but I want to have some markers set into the process so I have a clear indication that things are falling behind.
And I should probably finish the blog post for the coming week.
