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 loaded up on jobs-that-take-up-writing-time, but-aren’t-writing this week, so I’m trying to keep my goals pretty minimal: another three scenes on Float, some revision and fleshing out on the smaller scenes that have already been written that don’t feel weighty enough to keep in the book in their current form.
What’s inspiring me this week?
Zootopia. I meant to see this when it first came out, but somehow never got around to it. I regret that, a bit. I’m really interested in the way they construct their world when they’re not engaging in the obvious cartoon conceits – I think it was Kathleen who first mentioned that it was a movie where people used cell phones like we use cell phones in real life, and…dear god, I hadn’t realised what a non-essential prop movie cell phones were until now.
What part of my project an I avoiding?
I’ve not had much luck correcting the sleep patterns and getting back to a routine thus far, and I fell out of the habit of going to food courts to write while friends were visiting from Melbourne last weekend. Paying for all of that right now, but still not going back to the bits of my routine that I know, for sure, will work.
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
39 Responses
Peter: how’d you go with getting back to the practice of scene planning last week? Hope this week treats you better regarding the sleep pattern rework.
What am I working on this week?
This is the start of a fortnight of time geared more to voice acting rather than the day job after a fortnight of time taken up by day job mostly. THANK THE FATES. So I’m clearing out the long-form narration gig, along with website work and getting the commercial demo moving. Other than that, some self-teach on After Effects and Adobe Premiere for use in personal projects.
What’s inspiring me this week?
At the risk of being a little navel-gazey, progress. I had a short catchup with Kristine Oller yesterday, and it felt good to recognise the difference in where I was after finishing a year of working with her to now. I had a recording session this week for an audio drama, which was the rare gift of being able to record in-studio WITH other actors in the room. And it was great to feel like I was punching my weight, and adding to the whole experience.
I’m also SUPER-FRICKIN-EXCITED for an online voice acting in video games course in January, where I’ll be one of eight people benefiting from the incredible experience of Dave Fennoy.
Which reminds me – thank you so much for taking the time to talk about the IMC, @tanaudel – that sounds like an incredible opportunity, and the names I recognised from illustration definitely showed how prestigious the talent is in their faculty and guests – hope you have a blast!
What part of my project am I avoiding?
The website work and commercial demo are still shy of any real advancement, but I’m hoping to push them forward over the next fortnight.
The online voice acting course sounds like fun, Kevin. Can’t wait to hear about it.
Awesome news on the course for Jan. So great starting the New Year off with something really exciting.
Huzzah for progress (I said productivity in my comment below but I meant progress). So good to have a benchmark!
Re: self-teaching, do you play around with it as you go, or do you set aside study time?
I’m working through a couple of Udemy courses at the moment (starting with Adobe Premiere)
Both products seem so impenetrable (as a newbie) that just tinkering without a foundation of knowledge to work from would leave me overwhelmed. Getting close to the point though where I’m going to start putting together new video content using Premiere, which’ll give me an even more practical bent than the training courses. 🙂
Very cool about getting to focus on the passion in the coming weeks! Neat, too, about how helpful the change sessions are. I can only imagine how helpful it is to have an outside person to bounce ideas off and help focus forward progress! 🙂
IN-FREAKING-VALUABLE. The course correction from our last chat together is already helping immensely, and I’m hoping to work with Kristine again during the middle of next year at some point. It’s so hard to get outside of the narratives playing out in your own head.
I loved Zootopia! It’s just such a delightful film. And good luck with Float and correcting sleep patterns.
My Sunday Circle is here.
Ugh. Condolences on the head-cold. EAT GINGER. ALL THE GINGER.
Glad to hear that Exorcist update is worth the time – good slow burn horror/thriller is so hard to find. So many exorcism films (at least in the late 00’s spate of them) just lean into jump scares.
Gah, my wordcount congrats for you went to Ree – she’s supposed to get the thumbs up for making her protag suffer. (Writers are so like economists sometimes – “it’s for the good”!) Hope you’re over the cold soon. What’s the rule of thumb? 5-7 days for it to pass, isn’t it?
Congratulations on maintaining the word count for NaNoWriMo! Get well soon and factor in some recovery time too.
Fantastic about the word count progress! Here’s hoping the cold clears up fast! 😀
Hope your sleeping patterns settle into a good rhythm this week, Peter. It makes sense to revise your goals when life rudely intrudes. Great work on achieving them this week.
Hi everyone, Here’s my Sunday Circle..
Congrats on being in the thick of it, kicking ass!
Regarding the change in your draft being a difficult one for your protagonist – do you mean structurally, or is that a hesitation to put your protagonist through adversity? (apologies if you’ve discussed this in the past and I’m forgetting that conversation!)
My hesitation to put her through adversity. The “geniuses” who guide my writing, however, have no such hesitation, which is a good thing. The change needed to happen; it was inevitable. But because I’m a “pantser” I often don’t see things coming until my fingers type them onto the page.
I never thought hairy walls would be so cool! So glad you’re writing is going well and best of luck with your target wordcount!
Thank you for the reminder to go to GOMA! It’s like an art theme park.
Did I mention they’re rebuilding the giant slide!!!
That installation looks amazing! Art feeds the imagination in such lovely ways. ^_^ And hooray for getting into the zone with the WiP! That’s always such a fantastically fun feeling. Have fun! 😀
What am I working on this week?
Same same. About to move off the scene it’s taken me WEEKS to get right. It’s the threshold crossover scene and especially challenging because I wanted high heat with a subtle emotional discord. Writing the reverse is a lot easier…
What’s inspiring me this week?
Finally saw The Martian and also The Intern. (Gagging to see Ghostbusters still.) So, LOVED the former and the whole get-on-with-it and Science-the-*-out-of-a-problem approach. The Intern had some lovely moments, not least having De Niro play mushy, along with some interesting social commentary. And yet, the twist and that ending. Cliche sandwich full of baloney. As Good As It Gets remains my fave Meyer film. Also, Biden/Obama memes. After that election, they really helped.
What part of my project am I avoiding?
Not avoiding now: I’ve got a hard deadline (yay) so it’s crank and churn time! Although, Christmas. Eek. Much baking must happen.
I loved Ghostbusters! Forgot to mention I saw Nocturnal Animals this week which was amazing. Visually stunning and intense. Congrats on getting your challenging scene right, Karina.
Heh, agree with you about writing the reverse:)
Can you delegate any Christmas baking yet?
I have the kids baking with me quite often but they make it a rather stressful experience. (Think flour explosions plus a five year old who eats half of everything he makes before it’s cooked.) They do help with the sugarpaste decorations since that’s not dissimilar to Play-Doh only a lot more expensive….
Hooray for progress, especially after a tough path to tread! I’m still in awe of your handing of crisp, complex, richly interwoven scenes, but it’s probably those weeks of work that get them to shine! ^_^ Bravo for powering through it! (And hooray for deadlines, which can so be the motivating push one needs!)
Holy smoke, can I quote that line? “crisp, complex, richly interwoven scenes” wowsers! Thanks!!
Haha! Anytime! ^_^
Super late, but still within 30 minutes of Sunday way out over here. ^_^ I’ll probably have to do comments tomorrow because I’m about to crash out, but I will!
@Peter: Best of luck with the upcoming Float scenes! I’ve often found that sometimes knowing how easily I could be really productive (like having a great routine) has the counteractive quality of making me almost scared to get started, knowing that the productivity rollercoaster is going to catch me and pull me along whether I’ve got the energy for it or not. But having small goals is probably the best way to ease back into your standard speed of work!
My Sunday (almost Monday) Circle is here!
Oh, it is good to have enthusiastic people around – I am very glad you have that!
Keep going on your WiP – you know it’ll make all the shiny new stuff better to work on without that lingering in the background. Good luck with Thanksgiving. (And also from saving me rushing to get Finding Dory when it’s released on DVD etc here – I couldn’t see how they were going to plot a whole movie over her getting lost so I’m not disappointed to have missed it in cinemas now.)
I didn’t find it an especially engaging movie (and the kiddo zoned out almost the whole time, though he watches Finding Nemo religiously, so I feel like I’m not 100% off-base, though my cousin who’s a movie buff loved it), though there are some interesting side characters (Becky made me and my husband laugh our heads off), but it seemed more gag-driven than the more complicated soul-searching in Nemo. I at least (in my opinion only, of course!) felt like you could feel where the animators and story writers were excited about an idea (silly asides, funky secondary characters, the real-life aquarium as a setting), and where they were just kind of going through the story motions (unfortunately, most of the Dory plot line). I may not rush to see it, but I’m not sorry I did eventually get around to it! 🙂
What am I working on?
– A stack of reading, brainstorming and thumbnail sketches for illustration jobs
– Colouring one big illustration.
– NaNoWriMo which is teaching me a lot about how not to plan, but if I stop to correct the project I will honestly not start it again. It’s worth it for the education.
– Novella.
What’s inspiring me?
– How various authors make unattractive characters attractive, most particularly Miller from The Expanse.
– I’m reading some of Mark McGuiness’ books (productivity & motivation for creative people, at the moment) and finding a lot of advice of small-scale immediate practical use, especially re creative resistance and ‘incubation’.
– Catching up on some show-watching, i.e. The Expanse and Zoo.
– As Kevin said, productivity! I’ve checked three big mental block projects off the list and feel very free at the moment.
What am I avoiding?
– I’ve had a crash course in being opportunistic and having a sense of urgency – my parents have needed a fair bit of help last week and this, so my time has been limited and I’ve had to seize it and tell people not to interrupt me for scant half hours here and there. That, plus a frantic afternoon when I got back to my own house, has seen me stay on-track for NaNoWriMo and get three big art tasks out of the way, as well as some of the business issues. So, in terms of resisting work, I have not been actively avoiding much.
– I have, however, dropped a number of undroppable things to stay caught up, such as exercise and paperwork.
Also I finally had a Big Important Conversation with my (nominally present) boss and while I don’t know the outcome yet, it wasn’t an awful experience.
A B.I.C. sounds promising…. Hope further conversations reduce stress levels rather than add to them. Can paperwork be tackled in stages?
How did you get into the Expanse? I loved the premise BUT we couldn’t understand the bloody mumbling/ poor diction in the pilot episode. Given we got into The Wire this is really saying something. Just had a hearing test so it’s not us and yet it’s a subtitles job… (BTW, how does one get those to show on Netflix?)
I was crocheting! Also it had been recommended to me on the basis of the sets/world details rather than dialogue/story, so I wasn’t watching it for that.
Paperwork alas still has to happen in dashes between back treatments/food/tooth brushing etc
It’s amazing what one can get done even with restricted time! (I do find busy kiddo times have absolutely eliminated my need for any kind of “warmup” for writing–I know I may only have a half hour here or there!) And woohoo for big mental block projects being out of the way! Opens the floodgates for all sorts of possibilities. The books sound good, too, so I may have to take a peek at those… ^_^
I can see how it must be done, but its a difficult gear change to make!
Peter, I love the tech in Zootopia (yes it was me, and I know I’m repeating myself). All the best with small goals and treating yourself to bits of a functional routine again!