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?

The first draft of Project Rad involves a lot of sprawling mess at this stage, a proliferation of no-longer-useful scenes and narrative diversions that didn’t pan out. But it’s got me tot he point where I can see the underlying structure of the novel (and, at this stage, I’m predicting it’ll be a short novel) and the voice of it is starting to come together. 

The bulk of this week will be spent working on the third act, laying down the end-point before I go and flesh out the two halves of the second act. I’ll also be re-reading the other books in the Keith Murphy series, making notes for things that I need to keep in mind.

What’s inspiring me this week?

I am both devastated and inspired by last night’s results in the Australian election, which promises three years of a government I’m fundamentally opposed to on every level but also serves as a stark reminder that my primary contribution towards getting a world I want to live in is showing up to vote every three years.

There’s a world of possible contributions that could be made beyond that, as an individual as an artist, and I spent a lot of time thinking those through last night while watching the results come in.

All too often I check out of those kinds of decisions because they either a) feel too hard or overwhelming, or b) feel like they need more than individual action to actually have an impact. But the lesson of being an writer is focusing on regular, cumulative efforts and watching them payoff over time–and I’m starting to think it’s time to apply my logic here.

What action do I need to take?

I cleared 100+ emails that had been accumulating in my inbox over the past week, in addition to responding to a whole bunch of outstanding messages in other venues. I’m still not back in the swing of things–my anxiety kicks in bad when I’ve been AWOL on a conversation for a while–but this week is all about working my way through all of those and finally getting up to date on the hard stuff .

I also need to get across all the changes happening over at Mailchimp at the moment, and figure out the long-term implications for my newsletter.