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 still don’t have a name for the novella I’m writing at the moment, but I’m going to start referring to it as PROJECT BEEMAN here because I’m growing increasingly aware that there is little else to differentiate between various creative projects when I talk about them. I’m currently 10,000 words in and have just stumbled into the second act, drafting a scene between the protagonist and their foil that marks the beginning of the subplot that’s intended to drive the action until the act closes.
I’m also starting to sketch out the dramatic versus iconic character notes that I started pondering last week, in an effort to lock down some content for the upcoming thesis chapter. I’m preparing to do what’s effectively going to be the heavy lifting on my academic work – a chapter that provides a framework for looking at series works as a cohesive form with notes about the techniques open to writers in order to create a sense of unity and generate effect.
What’s inspiring me this week?
I’ve been heavily immersed in books about structure and form for the last week, which meant I ended up going back and rereading Dean Wesley Smith’s Writing Into the Dark which walks through Smith’s own process for writing his way through a novel without doing any planning at all. I always take Smith’s advice with a pinch of salt – the career he outlines is not necessarily going to make all writers happy – but it’s incredibly useful to revisit this book when I feel like I’m getting bogged down in my own head while working on a story.
I’ve also been reading Joe Abercrombie’s Sharp Ends, his short story collection which brings together a bunch of story-length work set in the same world as his novels. I started out looking specifically at the way he uses third person, since he’s really good at putting us in a character’s head while writing in the third person mode, but I quickly got distracted by the way he uses events in his novels as the basis for short fiction by spinning it off with another point of view.
As a method of building out a world – and it’s not until I read this book that I realised just how focused Abercrombie’s work is on building up his world in a very cohesive way – it’s incredibly fascinating.
What action do you really need to take?
This question has traditionally been “what have you been avoiding” ever since i started the Sunday Circle, but one of the things I’ve been avoiding for a long time is sitting down and addressing the final question in order to get closer to what it was originally intended to do in Todd Henry’s The Accidental Creative.
Henry himself had already revised this, when he revisited the notion in the circle in a later work. Instead of asking what people were avoiding/needed to be prompted on, he replaced it with this:
What resources can be we bring to the table to help you in your work?
Of course, it’s also meant to be asked in a small group who meet regularly and in person, rather than showing up on the internet. On the other hand, it could be useful to have a question that’s more focused generating questions on “does any have advice about handling X” than answers like “I am not doing y.”
So I’m rather torn at the moment, and I’m turning to the resources all of you bring to the table: would you rather have “things your avoiding” question three traded and replaced? Does either of the above hold more appeal?
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
21 Responses
I’m really looking forward to seeing how your thesis is evolving. The Dean Wesley Smith book sounds interesting, too, especially as I’m just sounding out a centre ground for myself between planning and not.
I tried answer the three options for the final question, and they really force different thought processes! I found “what action do you need to take” was answered by a few points I’d been putting in the “what are you working on” question, which clarified it a bit more. And next actions could include finding/seeking resources.
What I’m working on
– Going home! I fly in less than 24 hours and while I’m sorry to leave, I’ve been living out of a suitcase for long enough that all my emotions have become slightly muted.
– Editing a short story.
– Learning the shapes of ghost stories. I love M.R. James and my theory for his stories is a Jack-and-the-Beanstalk structure. But I need to read some solid creepy ghost stories by other authors too, so I’d love some recommendations.
What’s inspiring me
– Going to art galleries and looking for just one thing: the colour yellow, or spirals, or people with secrets. It’s an education, and also you start making connections between things, which is useful for stories.
– Talking. I spent six hours nominally in art galleries but actually talking about ghost stories and movies with an author friend in New York today, and it was wonderful. And last night I met some curators and Swiss artists on the roof of the building.
– The uses of time in stories, most recently in Dunkirk.
– I’m also reading Trucker Ghost Stories.
What action do I really need to take
– Making regular arrangements for someone to lock me in a room (literally or metaphorically) for one day a week to work on JUST ONE THING until it is done.
– I also need to look over how this trip went and note a strategy for getting work done next time I’m abroad. In particular, not having good night-time/indoor work lighting is a real problem when travelling. I’ll need to look into flat/folding LED lamps for future long trips. Along with the light box and a portable scanner. I fantasised about travelling light, not travelling lights.
Talking ghost stories for six hours in an art gallery sounds like a perfect day to me. As for ghost stories, have you read Susan Hill’s novella The Small Hand? To be honest, I didn’t love it as a story- I’ve read other work by her that I much prefer – but many people say The Small Hand is a classic ghost story. It’s worth having a look at if you haven’t come across it yet.
The *name* freaks me out.
In terms of ghost stories, Stephen King recommends The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson as a solid ghost story read, so if that’s not on your list, definitely worth a read!
And regarding blocking out a day, I CAN’T recommend it enough. Tuesday – the start of my work week – has become that for me, and it’s a spot on my calendar that I jealously guard, so I can get the stuff done that most matters/has an impact to me. Maybe start with just blocking out one day for a key project each week – is that something you’re able to do?
The framework chapter you’re working on for your thesis sounds really interesting Peter. I look forward to reading it in a couple of years. As for the 3rd question, I agree with Kathleen. What actions do you need to take would work much better for me, and it opens up the possibility of asking for input from others as one of those actions. The 3rd question is usually a bit of a nothing question for me because the only thing I regularly avoid is housework because I’m using the time to write so I’m more than happy to make the change.
Your thesis seriously sounds super interesting. The dramatic versus iconic character stuff gave me a lot to think about last week too, so I’m excited to see where you take it in your thesis and how you apply it to character in your novella.
I also really like the change to the third question being about what action you need to take. I think often that can be harder to articulate, but an essential thing to think about in moving your project forwards.
My Sunday Circle is here.
Hope you’re able to knock some progress out of the park this week with both projects!
And regarding the structural shift from act 1 to act 2 – I recall a while back people here mentioning that bringing things back to character and motivation helped make necessary structural changes clearer. It sounds like it’s all in hand, but if not, maybe that’ll help!
What am I working on this week?
This week is continuing work on the film project. This is making good headway, but I’m hoping to close this out soon as it’s starting to define my week-to-week by its presence, which is a sign it’s been around for a while. Want to be on the other side of it, while still enjoying the work immensely. I’ve also got another video game project landing which I’ll have a recording session for likely sometime this week, and I’m told the commercial demo is likely to be hitting Monday, so there’s going to be a chunk of time spent with cold-contacts with this, which is exciting.
Other than that, some obligations to do with the psychotic midget and her new day care orientation.
What’s inspiring me this week?
On the navel-gazy front, we headed out to the snow on Thursday as a family day because my partner is about to head back to full-time work and it’d be the last chance for a weekday day trip beating the crowds, and it was fantastic. We were in the middle of an incoming cold front, so we got the full winter wonderland experience. We deal so often with the downsides of freelancing, it was nice for once to consciously enjoy the upside in that flexibility.
I’ve been playing through Dead Space 2 as preparation for a horror panel that might be going ahead at PAX, and really enjoying it, and picking apart what works/doesn’t work with it structurally and how it uses horror tropes after reading Danse Macabre.
Two small shifts recently in work practice have really made a difference:
* Finally incorporating Todd Henry’s recommendation on 15 minutes of reflection at the end of each day on what went well/not well/could be adjusted in future
* Keeping a weekly spreadsheet of the numbers that matter for me freelancing-wise, so there’s a constant urge to increase the ones that are lagging behind last week’s.
What action do I really need to take?
This week, the big game changer on my list is definitely chasing as many commercial demo leads as I can, and getting that flung far and wide in as many faces as possible.
What resources can be we bring to the table to help you in your work?
I’m currently in the process of updating my freelancing rates for the new financial year, and looking at formalising things a little more. Any resources or advice on the psychology/math of freelancing rates very much appreciated!
I mean, seriously. LOOKIT THAT SNOW.
Bugger. No image HTML. Here’s the link.
Are you looking for Freelance rates to benchmark your work or freelance rates you can make public? I avoided the latter in the past, because it gave me some flexibility when doing gigs…and kept the option of using a “fuck off” price if offered a gig I didn’t particularly want or need to do, but didn’t want to turn down outright. On the other hand, writing also comes with the ASA payment guidelines that serve as a useful benchmark for “professional” writing rates even if they’re rarely achieved.
Useful Links from my archives: this article over at lifehacker, and Kristin Kathryn Rusch’s Freelancer’s Survival Guide (also available as an ebook).
Looking at more general advice to revisit around the psychology of pricing, and also how other freelancers approach setting their rates in general.
Not planning to make the rate card public, for pretty much the exact reason you cite there. 😉
Thank you for those resources!
A successful freelancer (graphic designer) I worked with once years ago said you should never price yourself too low because potential clients will assume you do poor quality work or expect you do do extras for nothing. His advice was always to set your price at the higher end of the market to avoid time-wasters and attract clients who are more likely to generate repeat business.
Peter: how’d you go with the business plan that was lingering last week?
Regarding the questions, I’d actually be comfortable with “What action do you really need to take” and also the resources question.
I think there’s a tendency with the ‘avoiding’ question to provide a ‘nothing!’ answer, as it feels a little negative to be avoiding something – unless you really dig for an answer. I’d really appreciate knowing how I can possibly help people more, too – to give the group some definite benefit for people. I’m not shy in asking for help/recommendations myself, but feel selfish if the question isn’t reciprocated. 🙂
Back to comment more this evening – gotta run!
Apologies if this is appearing twice but I think my Sunday Circle link went missing.
Here’s my Sunday Circle
The full time/part time thing is a really interesting question, particularly with that commute thrown into the mix.
The main thing that caught me off-guard, during my brief flirtations with full-time work, was how much time got lost because there was no longer the option to do things on a weekday. It’s relatively easy to handle any shopping errands or going to the post-office in a half-hour or so on a week-day, for example, but fitting them into a weekend was a lot tougher due to the density of crowds during peak times. Compressing time like that inevitably ate into what I hoped would be productive times.
Similarly, it’s a lot harder to guard a weekend against interruptions than it is a week day. It’s when friends and family are most likely to schedule social activities, and even with the best of intentions I struggled to maintain a Saturday or Sunday as a dedicated writing day.
My experience inevitably ended up with me defaulting back to part-time work because it was easier, but I was also not dealing with the commute.
On the other hand, one of the things that I liked when working full-time or working part-time gigs close to home is the ability to cram productive time into my day very early on. Having a deadline where you have to leave, because the job is about to start, often means that it’s easier to click into work-mode.
thanks Peter. I’m really struggling with the do I / don’t I at the moment. I’ve been working p/time now for almost 3 years & I said I’d never go back to full-time unless it meant I didn’t have to commute. And really, being able to walk out the door at 8.25 & be at the office at 8.30 is very tempting. Even more tempting is the avoidance of being stuck in a bus in peak hour traffic that’s taking 5 minutes to crawl 100 metres. But you’re right about things taking longer to do on a weekend than a week-day. It’s a tough one.
Regarding the shift between 4 and 5 days – a few questions, some of them reiterating what Peter has asked.
If you moved to 5 days a week, how confident are you that you could protect your work schedule on the weekend from commitments?
Is there any way you can turn the commute time you have currently into productive time? Is there any part of the work you’re looking to get done in a week that can be done while you’re in transit, by preparing blocks of work ahead of time?
If your regular commute was removed, what would your daily schedule look like during a 5 day week for blocking out your writing work around the energy and time commitments of the other job?
What do you realistically think would be the difference in energy commitments between your current job and the 5 day job, given the difference in responsibility and salary?
thanks Kevin, they’re some good focused questions. I think the “energy commitment” is what I really need to assess. I’ll need to do more research into the job.