The Sunday Circle: What Are You Working On This Week?

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’ve got a couple of projects moving forward this week, but the one that needs the most thought is the draft for a novella called Warhol Sleeping. It’s the oldest thing on my big list of unfinished projects, and about half done, so I’m giving myself a week of tinkering to see a) whether it can be salvaged as a project (it was originally a cyberpunk-ish thing, drafted in the era before smartphones) and b) whether I can transform the suite of vignettes into a narrative arc within a reasonable amount of time.

What’s inspiring me this week?

I’ve been reading Mary Robinette Kowal’s Word Puppets short story collection, which covers a lot of career ground (early stories to later works) and shows her progression as a writer. I’m a fan of Kowal’s work in general, but an even bigger fan of the way she unpacks progress online and in workshops/the Writing Excuses podcast, and you can see the kind of thinking she talks about at work in the craftsmanship of her stories.

What action do I need to take?

I’ve got my next short story collection formatted and the meta-data and sales spiel is all written up. That just leaves final proofing, some minor tinkering with the original stories, and the authors notes on all the stories on the to-do list. The scheduled release date is the end of May, so I need to pick up the pace on these this week.