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 finished the first act of my supernatural western draft this week, bringing all seven of the main characters together and preparing them to summon ghosts from the underworld. I’m using that break-point in the narrative to shift my focus over to editorial work for a bit, since I’ve realised that there’s a *huge* bottleneck in my process and the number of unfinished works is starting to mount up.
So my big task or the week is trailing a bunch of editorial exercises on some short-fiction, figure out which ones are working for me, and documenting them in once place so I don’t have to go looking for the books/posts/course notes they came from.
What’s inspiring me this week?
Jeff VanderMeer’s Wonderbook, which I started re-reading after flicking through the revision chapters and deciding to go back and do a really detailed re-read of the entire thing. It really is an extraordinary book about writing, and writing fantastic fiction in particular. I don’t think I truly appreciated it the first time I read through it.
What part of my project an I avoiding?
I’ve been going pretty well this week – big wins at the day-job, a big milestone on the novel draft, a plan in place to correct a bottleneck that’s been bugging me for a while now on the editorial front. I’m even on top of my email, responding to things in a timely manner.
Which means that what I really, really need to do is think up some potential blog topics that aren’t me showing up and talking about my day, given that my usual start to writing-related posts is me getting angry with myself for the things that I’m not doing.
