And Now We Are Forty-Eight
18/03/2025
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It’s the eighteenth of March here in Australia, which means I’ve just turned another year older. We’re still fixing things up after
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 a third of the way through the wordcount on my thesis chapter and barely feel like I’ve gotten started. This week will involve tracing my way through part of structuralist genre theory, and really diving into the research on the role of ellipsis in constructing narrative ahead of the X-mas-to-New Year period where texts will be harder to track down.
What’s inspiring me this week?
I’ve watched and read a bunch of great stuff this week, but The Marvellous Mrs Maisell on Amazon Prime has probably been the thing that really captured my attention. It’s a project from the creator of the Gilmore Girls, Amy Sherman-Palladino, but it blends a lot of the hallmarks of her work (fast dialogue, children not fitting into rigidly-defined family roles) and blends it with the New York stand-up scene of 1958 and a level of edginess that Sherman-Palladino isn’t going to reach on commercial TV.
What action do I need to take?
I really need to go hit the University library in person, picking up a handful of texts that aren’t available online. I also need to read through the half-dozen PhD exegesis I’ve got sitting on my hard drive so I can start familiarising myself with the structure of the sections I’m wirting and start to internalise it a little. What to write is harder to figure out when you’re trying to figure out how to write it at the same time.
It’s the eighteenth of March here in Australia, which means I’ve just turned another year older. We’re still fixing things up after
I’m writing this from an apartment packed down for impending cyclone/hurricane due to hit Brisbane some time in the next 24 hours.
I recently offered GenrePunk Ninja subscribers a list of options for a series of deep dive entries, and got them to vote
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What am I working on this week?
Got my cover art. Got my first book up for pre-order on Amazon. So this week, I’m doing all the last setup things I’ve been stalled on.
It’s very exciting.
What’s inspiring me this week?
Episode 6 of season 2 of The Crown opens with a group of American soldiers driving a Nazi officer out into the gloomy woods of 1945. He leads them through the trees to a clearing. He paces out a distance into it. Then nods. The American soldiers begin to dig.
All the way through this sequence I desperately wished I wasn’t watching The Crown so something supernatural would happen at the end.
What action do I need to take?
I want to book one or two marketing mailings for after my book ends it’s first month on Amazon. Nothing too much, as this will be worth doing more later when I have more books. But I’d like to try it and see what kind of result I get.
Woohoo for being on the last stretch of setup stuff – nicely done!
That scene from The Crown sounds grim – are they digging a hole for the officer, or themselves? (Either way sounds like a pretty sobering, contemplative scene…)
They were digging something up…
… Not something supernatural, unfortunately. Like Himmler’s Lexicon Demonica or Bormann’s collection of genies. But it was a good episode.
Peter: have you managed that library trip yet? How are the odds looking before Christmas?
What am I working on this week?
Coming to the party super-late, thanks to a disrupted week. This week if I can get health back on track, looking to close out the next round of film pickups. SO CLOSE TO THE FINISH LINE. Other than that, I’ve downed tools on the survival job, so it’s starting to work through the year-end reading list. Finishing off Wonderbook, then starting in on Work Clean and The Accidental Creative.
What’s inspiring me this week?
Been reading through Silmarillion in quieter moments, and really enjoying it. Started reading through my backlog of Poe Dameron comics after being really annoyed with how the character was treated in The Last Jedi – he was such a breath of fresh air in The Force Awakens because so often when a character is highly skilled, they’re portrayed as egotistical, but Poe was just so damned WHOLESOME, and concerned with buoying up the spirits of those around him.
Other than that, I mainlined Shadow of War for two days while sick, and while the writing isn’t great, BOYHOWDY does that game have deep hooks for a short period of time with all of the systems offering feedback for incremental reward. It gets deep in the thinkmeats for a while – I think I’ve come out the other side of it now thanks to mainlining. One of the interesting things about the game’s writing is that while the main quest stuff is messy and inconsistent, the writing for the introductions to the orcs you meet are just grand – some rap, some sing, some are straight-up-and-down menacing orcs, some have hype men who introduce them. The comedy notes are definitely where the game has the most fun.
What action do I really need to take?
Preparing lead generation for next year for commercial v/o. Working through the reading list and taking copious notes.
Oh – I forgot to mention: there’s one note in the Silmarillion that’s kind of haunted me this week:
There’s a number of points so early in the history of Middle Earth (before the Age of Men, but at the noon of Valinor’s days) where Valar and elves create great works – the White Tree in Valinor, the Silmarils, the White Ships of the Noldor – and afterwards recognise that they will never create something of that majesty again. There’s something beautiful and haunting in the idea of having reached an unattainable height so early in their time on Middle Earth as immortals, and forever looking backward to the grandeur of that act…
I am adding “thinkmeats” to my vocabulary 🙂