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?
Typing up a short story that’s been kicking around in my notebook for a few weeks, trying to dredge out the heart of the story from a handful of false starts. That alternates with putting together some rough write-ups of PhD ideas and research, so I’ve got something to work with over the next couple of months.
What’s inspiring me this week?
I watched Iron Fist in a thirteen-hour block, as is my wont with the Netflix Marvel shows. It’s not the best they’ve done by any stretch of the imagination – and the first episode verges on being excruciatingly bad – but there’s a really interesting mix of things that work really well and things that just…don’t.
When they get a scene right, they get it really right. Every couple of episodes they’ll build up to a scene where a character gets exactly what they want, but it ends up screwing said characters so badly and surprisingly that I just kinda sit there fascinated by how slickly they set things up.
On the downside it does a terrible job of getting around the inherently racist elements of the character, the action scenes are nowhere near as slick as the other Netflix shows, and the goofiness of the whole living-weapon-from-K’un-Lun is really foregrounded in the opening. It’s done for effect, but the payoff isn’t until you’re many, many episodes into the series and you put up with an awful lot of stupidity for no apparent reason until then
What part of my project an I avoiding?
I’ve been letting planning slide a bit over the last month, taking short-cuts instead of really investing in laying out projects and planning out what needs to happen. I’m going to be taking a few hours on Monday to do a really thorough sweep and start the quarterly planning process.
