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 feel a bit absurd doing this today, since the answer is largely “being there for my family during our second awful week in a row.” With so much going on involving hospitals and serious conversations with doctors, work has well-and-truly fallen by the wayside.

What’s inspiring me this week?

Damon Suede’s Verbalize, a writing book I picked up at the start of the hospital visits to give myself a productive distraction. Suede’s philosophy of building character around what the character does over the course of a story, rather than digging into the psychological make-up of their motivations, is both startlingly practical and a brilliant departure from the way in which most how-to-write books talk about the characterization process. 

I expect I will write more about it later, but wanted to take a moment to recommend it here. It gave me a shiny new tool to play with during the bulk of the last week, which kept me focused on writing slightly longer than I would have otherwise.

What action do I need to take?

We’re heading into the prepare-for-the-worst part of my dad’s recovery from surgery, and there’s two things I’m really mindful of at the moment.

The first is needing to double-check with other people about the flow of information–who is being informed of what, and whether people who should hear things privately are informed before information seeps into social media.

The second, should the worst actually happen, is how to handle the public sphere and things like the Sunday Circle. I’ve been thinking of tapping someone else to run it for a few weeks, should I need to disappear from the internet for a stretch, but figuring out the logistics of that seems too daunting 🙂