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?
Two-part week for me: I’ve got an article deadline on Thursday, and a short story redraft that I set aside right before heading to Contact over the weekend. I’m about a quarter of the way through the rewrite, and I’d really like to get it finalized and out to beta-readers within the next two weeks.
What’s inspiring me this week?
I’m off to a con in mere minutes, so this weeks inspiration is a short list: The Coen Brother’s Hail, Caesar; Jason Sizemore’s memoir about being a small-press SF publisher, From Exposure; the glorious array of peeps I’ve had a chance to catch up with at Contact, including a larger number of folks who have been commenting here on the Sunday circle.
If you’re not in Brisbane this weekend, this is your official heads up that a couple of our regulars may be running late this week.
What part of my project an I avoiding?
I’ll be honest – despite blogging about it and thinking about it and talking about it, I was unprepared for the con this weekend. Because I was unprepared, I have not budgeted my usual I’ve spent the weekend around lots of people and now I need to decompress time. I’m walking out of the con and straight into writing work, day-job work, and housework, and I’m already tempted to start putting all of that off.
This is not idea. I absolutely need to figure out where that decompression is going to happen, else I will be the grumpiest of grumpy fuckers in the coming week.
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
14 Responses
For Exposure is a fun book, and it’s even got a ridiculously silly-ish “What Comes Next” story by me at the end (horror of horrors!) Hope you and all my fellow Sunday Circle-rs who are in Brisbane this weekend have a great time! 😀
What am I working on this week?: I need to have a serious sit-down with myself and figure out next steps to get the novel rewrite back on track after two weeks of houseguests. It’d be great if I could finish the summary draft of the rewrite so I can get the big-picture of what needs to be rewritten, and I’d love to make actual progress on new scenes that need to be put together. We’ll see…
What’s inspiring me this week?: Getting control over my own time again. My houseguest has been fantastic in many, many ways, but I’m a hardened introvert and two weeks is a loooooong time to have someone else in your space. Very much looking forward to some decompressing and getting back into my normal flow of life. Also: since novel editing/rewriting has been intimidating the crap out of me, I picked up a copy of the aforementioned Charlotte Nash e-book on editing process, and so far, it’s doing a fantastic job of assuring me that I’m on the right track and that there are a lot of things I can do to stay on track, which is immensely reassuring!
What am I avoiding this week?: Picking up the novel rewrite. After two weeks, it’s gone cold, and I’m rusty as hell. The mere thought of getting back to it is exhausting (though that may be the over-socialization talking, too). I know after a couple days, I’ll get back in the groove, but ugh—breaking the inertia wall is no fun…
Hey there Maggiedot! Do you have a particular piece of music you associate with that work? I try to have a playlist for each story – turning it on, even after a break, then takes me straight back to the mindset of that story. I can’t always write to music, but certainly when I’m exploring a new idea, it helps to pull some songs together that suggest key themes, characters or emotions.
As for me, I’d otherwise feel bereft this weekend given SwanCon, Contact and Mancunicon are all on and I’m not at any… but we’ve a houseguest over from Australia and so I can’t complain!
What am I working on this week?
Putting down last 1,000 words or so to the Fun Flimsy’s opening – and a bit of polishing to make sure my heroine has agency. She’s a soft, modest character but that’s no excuse for her to martyr herself. Next step after that is to send it off for initial feedback. Trying some new channels here.
What’s inspiring me this week?
Um. I’ve been told this week that building a narrative arc is my weakness. (I knew this but thought I’d improved. Not enough, alas.) Does Charlotte’s book on editing touch on this? Honestly, I’m at a bit of a loss on how to approach because I’ve been a fan of the Hero’s Journey for 20 years, can quote chunks of Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey, have attended James Scott Bell’s workshop on Story Structure and STILL have failed to apply this collective knowledge successfully to my own material.
What am I avoiding this week?
I now have feedback comments from both of my former projects to work through and address. The latter one can wait a little. Kathleen’s require the immediate priority, although I’ve addressed about 20% her notes to date. Still want to keep momentum on the new work flowing, though, so I think the 30 minute timer idea will be deployed this week once our guest departs for Budapest.
Charlotte’s book doesn’t cover that – it’s mostly a process, rather than examining the tools of editing (and actually assumes you’ve got that down).
Would delve into this a little more were it not a con week, since talking about narrative structure is my jam, but the short-list of books I tend to recommend regarding structure is over here and may be useful (although, if you’ve covered Vogler and Bell, you’ve got a great start).
The thing that finally made structure click, for me, was seeing a whole bunch of movies in which it was implemented poorly and figuring out why they didn’t affect me the way they should versus films that well-and-truly had me engaged.
Thanks Karina! In the past, I’ve had a hard time associating this one to music because there’s no distinctive love story (at all…in fact, it’s a bit of an anti-love story), BUT that said, since you suggested it, I thought I’d give it a try (since music has definitely helped with other stories in the past for me!). And what do you know! I have an album that actually fits the tone of it, and even isn’t all that love-focused, which is perfect! I’m starting to keep a list of tunes that also click for me on this one as I listen to Pandora, so hopefully I’ll have a better in-the-zone playlist for this one as the weeks go on, too. 🙂 Thanks for the suggestion!
Yeah, Charlotte’s book is more organizing yourself to keep pace on an edit (kind of reminds me of The Clockwork Muse by Eviatar Zerubavel, but fiction-focused and more streamlined–both will be great, I think, in getting an edit on track and keeping it on track). I really liked The Weekend Novelist (which I think is on Peter’s list he mentioned, too)–the way he explains the echoing/associations between End of Act I with End of Act II, and Midpoint with Climax, etc., were hugely eye-opening to me (it was the first time I’ve really been able to watch a film or read a book and break it down into Act I/Act II/Act III and have it make sense). Structure is tough for me, too. I’m very visual, but the standard “rising action” diagram just doesn’t work for me most of the time. Ray’s book at least gave me an altered diagram that makes more sense in my head.
You may already know about this, but I recently learned about the effects/causation development in fiction. It’s the idea that in the beginning of a story, effects are emphasized (like how in a murder mystery, you find a body. This isn’t the cause of the problem, but the outcome of it), and that by the end of the story, causes are emphasized. (In the mystery, the killer is found and we know why they killed.) I’m still wrapping my head around this a little for more literary stories, but so far, it’s worked in those situations, too. Haruki Murakami is fantastic to try this on, since most stories start out seeming really “What the heck is going on?” and by the end, it’s all clear as day (or…pretty clear. ^_^). Just kind of a different angle to look at story development which I hadn’t noticed before, and has been somewhat helpful from my own POV!
The “rising action” dialogue is actually a bit rubbish in terms of explaining structure – I avoid it like the plague when I’m teaching.
One of the more effective descriptions of how structure works, in a similar vein to the effects/causation approach, comes from Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat. He posits that the first act is a thesis: this is who this character is under extraordinary circumstances. The second act is antithesis, with the character plunged into a situation, where extraordinary circumstances hit and who they are will only cause problems to get worse. The third act is Synthesis: the character takes what they learned in the second act and applies it to the strengths they had first act in order to become a new person.
It’s a remarkably neat approach to structure once you get used to looking for it.
Can you afford to give yourself a gap day at all this week? To do other work than the novel rewrite? I find that things often slot into place on their own (and I get reenergised) on the Mondays where I’m looking after my daughter and doing housework and whatnot so my mind is working in the background on things…
Enjoy the time to yourself again, too!
That, I can do! And I’ve given myself the day to just kind of chill (and hunt for songs to inspire, like Karina suggested, which has been a fun adjacent project), and I think it’s been really good for me to just breathe. Something to be said about letting the energy build a bit before jumping in! 🙂
It probably doesn’t lessen the sting, but I heard a soundbite today on constructive criticism that might help: a reminder that positive feedback doesn’t help most of the time (rather telling us what we know already instead) but that it’s the constructive criticism that points out where growth is needed.
Also, given that you’re so close to the text references on narrative structure, would picking apart a few practical examples of narrative structure that you really enjoy (and enjoy the craft of) help at all, or have you done similar activities in the past?
Oops – I think that might have gone through to the wrong comment. Meant to reply to Karina!
Until you can find time for a proper decompress Peter, maybe look for points in time where you can get away from things for five or ten minutes and listen to a song or two with good, isolating headphones on? That might help you band-aid your energy until you can really charge the batteries again?
What am I working on this week? With no external deadline pressure from projects, this week is working largely on stripping the ‘shoulds’ out of daily and weekly routines to get back to a functional core, doing research for tentpole projects, and a quarterly Accidental Creative review for the three months coming up.
What’s inspiring me this week?
While I’d given myself last week to do nothing, I still managed to get some time-critical things done, get some coaching in, and move things forward. But the texture of each day was significantly different: I wasn’t trying to cram everything I could into each day, and I took time to breath and enjoy moments. I want to try and bring that feeling into my regular weekly schedule and shut out the mental voice constantly chanting ‘not enough’.
What am I avoiding this week?
Fixing a technical problem with a piece of hardware (still) But I’ve got a whole week of time available this week, so I’m going to (hopefully) just suck it up and get it done.
I’ve been chasing that kind of calm, focused daily routine too, lately. It’s really easy to get caught up in “shoulds” and they tend to be what keeps us from appreciating the things we *have* actually gotten done. This is a random thing from my mother (a mental health councilor by trade, specific in cognitive behavioral studies), regarding “shoulds”: People often beat themselves up/pressure themselves a lot more than they would *ever* think about beating up/pressuring their friends. If your best friend were in your shoes, would you tell your best friend that s/he isn’t doing “enough”? What would you say to them if they were feeling the way you are?
It’s not always easy, and it doesn’t always shut out the “not enough” mantra that runs through my mind, but often it can curb it a bit and bring a little more peace to my mind. Helps me to appreciate what I *have* gotten done, without adding the “yeah, but–“
Hey everyone
Thanks for all your comments and advice. I have notes on Save the Cat but haven’t actually read the original text and so I think a lot got lost in translation. The effects/causation and Act I/II/III echo and associations are more the sort of terminology that resonates with me. I’ll definitely have to check out the Weekend Novelist as I’ve only heard of it, never read any of it.
Hopefully the current piece I’m writing will help too – it’s 50% of my normal novel length, AND I’ve done a synopsis of key themes and character arcs in advance, so a good means of avoiding the episodic storylines I seem to have drifted into.
Maybe in a couple of weeks, Peter, I might pick your brain offline about assessing and addressing structure in more detail. I suspect it’s one of those things you physically need to work through to get, so it would be great if I could run my attempts at a movie or two past you.
Ta muchly!
Karina