Lo, it is Sunday. The day of rest. The beginning of the week, even though we all pretend that’s really Monday. The day we can set aside to ponder the seven days to come, think about the challenges that lie ahead, and how we can meet them.
With that in mind, it’s time for:
For those playing along at home, 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 half of the week will be devoted to marking and all the administrative stuff that comes with getting it finalised. I am so ready to have this all done, because it takes up time and headspace that I’d rather be putting towards getting my first PhD novella, Median Survival Time, locked down and redrafted.
What’s inspiring me this week?
Charlotte Wood’s The Writer’s Room, which collects together a bunch of long-form interviews with Australian and NZ Authors done in the long-form, Paris Review style. The upside of this format is getting a bunch of writers to talk about their craft and intent in a lot more detail, allowing for greater nuance and complexity than typically appears in a short-form interview on craft.
The downside, of course, lies in the relatively narrow band in which Wood selects interviewees–this came out of a project with a strong focus on the literary field. I find myself dearly wishing we could get something like this up and running for genre authors – I would kill for a two-hour, in depth interview in this vein with someone like Romance author Anne Gracie, SF Authors like Sean Williams, or thriller authors like Matthew Reilly.
What action do I need to take?
Give myself a firm set of guidelines for taking time off – and resuming work – after marking. More importantly, I need to be conscious of what marking actually meant and why I need to take a break.
I’ve been critiquing and grading 15,000 to 18,000 word a day for a week and a half now and I’ve only taken one day off in that time. My brain doesn’t register that as a big deal, but it’s mentally exhausting and sucks up enormous amounts of time. At the same time, my anxiety is berating me for taking two weeks away from “real” work and not factoring in the time to get fiction writing and research done, because I’ve not kept those numbers in the forefront of my mind.
Right now, I’m so frustrated with not-working that I’ll attempt to dive straight into my work the moment I’m done simply to relieve the pressure and growing anxiety about letting the other aspects of my life lie fallow. My fear, if I do that, is that I’m going to burn out fast.
This means I want a firm plan – time spent on break, what I’m doing when it’s time to restart work – rather than playing things by ear.
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
6 Responses
Peter: is there something stimulus-related you can ‘assign’ yourself for when you’ve finished marking to make relaxation look like work? (eg. video game with specific length, like Hellblade, or a series season on DVD?
I’d been considering that, bet set aside computer games or DVD series because there’s too much temptation to disappear down the rabbit hole. Instead, I’m going to try a series of movies at cinemas, for the bonus benefit of leaving the house and having a finite length of downtime.
If you’re ever looking for recommendations, there are a number of video games that are quite constrained experiences that I can recommend. As a bonus, they tend to be narrative-heavy as well in their focus.
I’m BACK! Post-moving-house now.
What am I working on this week?
This week is closing out an e-learning project with some minor fixes, performing an early monthly review for July to start momentum after the last stretch of moving-related chaos, and research around optimising audiobook production as it looks like I’ll be spending some time recording long-form narration over the next month or two.
What’s inspiring me this week?
The biggest thing is having roots in the ground again. The new place is a definite improvement – better space, high speed NBN – all round improvement. And knowing that we’re here to stay for at least a year has given me the mental freedom to start planning ahead again – I’d let structure sort of slip by the wayside while we were in the process of moving house. I’m excited by the prospect of being able to stream on Twitch, and looking at ways to resurrect some projects that had been looking for an appropriate avenue.
Other than that, I’ve been listening through The Corporation That Changed The World, and it’s continuing to blow my hair back.
What action do I really need to take?
Pushing forward with narrative skill development again, along with getting regular rhythms all back in place, an.
Congratulations on the house-moving! That’s a huge task to check off the list. All the best settling into the new routine!
@Peter: Would it be helpful, or frustrating, to set a really small word count goal, just to get your feet back in the water, but not expect too much (and/or to reign in the desire to plunge, but not completely deny the anxiety-drive to start getting back into it?) Or maybe focus on planning next project steps, rather than getting words down, to feel like progress is started, without getting too sucked down the rabbit hole?
What am I working on this week?
This week, I really need to finish the rewrite on a short story and get it submitted by Friday. I decided a few weeks ago when I re-engaged the “writing 500 words a day” goal that another goal I want to shoot for is submitting one new story a month. With the amount of writing I’ve gotten done in the past two weeks, that honestly should be quite do-able, even while working on a few longer-form novel projects in various stages.
What’s inspiring me this week?
Just finished One Breath which ended on a strong note (which is the best, most satisfying feeling). The physiology of pushing the human body to the max of its abilities is something I find completely enthralling (from the safety and comfort of my armchair, thank you).
Also, on a less exciting–well, thrilling, but in a bad way–note, I’ve finally gotten a backup hard drive (we’ve had one, but it’s formatted wrong for my mac, which is why I keep *thinking* I have one, but don’t…) because my computer was acting a bit funky today in a freaky weird, why the hell is it doing that, kind of way. I’ve been meaning to go through all our pictures and videos at some point and make some photobooks via Shutterfly so we’ll actually *look* at the pictures, but I keep putting it off as more urgent things come up. But the fluttering weirdness has made me realize that while I’ve got a somewhat cobbled-together backup system for writing (including some cloud backup), I haven’t made much progress on backing up the photos and videos. So *that’s* kind of my focus this week: get the photos backed up and saved, and off my computer. Next month, I’m hoping I’ll have time to compile a three-years-length photo book with all our desperately “we cannot lose these” photos in it, and from there on, I want to create a system for uploading, cataloging, and deleting unwanted photos on a monthly basis to keep it from getting out of hand. Data hoarding! BAH!
What action do I need to take?
I’ve done great on reading and writing these past two weeks, but what I reeeeally need to do is sit my tail down and write an account of our 10th anniversary trip to Montreal (which we took *last* weekend). It was our first trip to Canada, and we had a blast, even just for a single night (we live only about five hours away, yet had never gone–sheesh, how lame is that?), and I don’t want it to fade into the background and be totally forgotten. It’s already bad enough that it’s a week late, but I still remember things pretty clearly, and don’t want to let it get any further out!