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’ve just spent two weeks marking, and like all end-of-year grading exercises, it obliterated any other work. Which means this week is all about gaining ground on the two projects earmarked for end-of-November deadlines–getting my exegesis draft finished, and getting a new short story collection together. Everything will be drafting and line-edits for the next seven days, possibly the next fourteen.
What’s inspiring me this week?
My partner and I finally caught up with Season 4 of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, which is a phenomenal series in and of itself but also a really interesting one to look at in terms of series.
Serial fiction is often predicated on keeping characters iconic and close to archetype, particularly in animated narratives. She-Ra pushes its characters to evolve and change, a constant disruption of the status quo. The characters still cleave close to archetypes, but the series is finding new iterations on those archetypes and shedding new light upon them. Things that happen resonate through the series.
And the season finale…well, it’s a big status quo change. The kind that actually has me wondering whether everything we’ve seen thus far is the first act of a longer story, or if we just hit the end of a second act, or possibly the whole thing is unreadable in those terms.
It’s a fascinating thing to puzzle over, given where my head is at in thesis terms. I just wish I had the time to go down that particular rabbit hole.
What action do I need to take?
So many things. The key word for this week is regroup, since marking blew all plans out of the water and I don’t have any real sense of where I’m at with any projects. I new weekly checkpoint and project review is due, and it’s worth revisiting all my project plans for the quarter and seeing how challenges, goals, and timelines may have shited.
I’ve ended up taking a short, unscheduled break from writing newsletters over the last fourteen days. Regular GenrePunk Ninja transmissions will resume
Like many of you, I have good weeks and bad weeks on the writing front. This week has been rocky, and if
Welcome to GenrePunk Ninja supplemental, where I occasionally post foundational essays written before I launched the GenrePunk Ninja newsletter, especially if they’re
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What am I working on this week?
This is the second week of my quarterly R&D stretch. The focus for this week is finishing and submitting my first Alexa skill, which is almost done (not to jinx it!) and starting development on the next. This means facing a lot of anxiety around releasing something creative into the world, which is why I’ve set the goalposts so low for this initial project.
What’s inspiring me this week?
I’ve started a watch-through of The Expanse with my stream subscribers, watching two episodes a month. I’m really enjoying watching the show with a careful eye, and finding it both fascinating and lovely how true to the core of each character the characters are from the very get-go. It’s putting me in mind of the other thing blowing my hair back at the moment, which is Damon Suede’s Verbalize, which I’m still working through and enjoying the heck out of.
Other than that, tying in with the theme of diaspora that’s crystalized at the moment around what my brain’s finding interesting, I’m really enjoying the watch-through of Battlestar Galactica with my partner. The writing is spotty on occasion, but it delivers grand character moments, and the cast are a joy to watch, especially Katee Sackhoff.
What action do I need to take?
Finalise feature list for the first Alexa skill, and get a version tested and submitted for approval. That’s the big one.