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?
There’s five major projects on the boil this week, and it’s possible I’m sneaking in work on a sixth around the edges. The Warhol Sleeping structural sweep is underway–every scene is getting broken down in a spreadsheet so I can trace what’s happening and make sure the emotional payoffs are right. The next book in the series is about 6K in, spinning off one of the characters I cut from the early drafts and giving him his own story (in third person, past tense).
The other two projects are early drafts, but the real meat of my week is thesis driven: I’m starting to devote an hour a day to writing papers and chapter segments, building the work up with the same process that’s been guiding my fiction for the last two weeks. It has the advantage of breaking a big, scary task down into incremental bites.
What’s inspiring me this week?
I recently joined a whole bunch of different writing and indie publishing groups on Facebook, and started engaging with a bunch that I’d joined and largely ignored. It’s put me into contact with the kind of “how do I…” conversations that used to be part and parcel of working for the Writers Centre, and started pushing me to really think about how and why I do certain things (or believe certain things are a bad idea).
What action do I need to take?
I’m at that dangerous part of a getting my shit together where it feels like I can start taking on more things. Already, putting this post together, I’ve been looking at things I’d like to do and feeling like I could just tack an extra two-hour pomodoro into my day in order to stack another task onto the table.
It’s really hard to ignore that temptation, and I need to start revisiting priority lists and paying careful attention to the hours I can devote to stuff. It’s time to start looking at how much time I really have to get things done every day, and stay focused on what’s really important.
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
2 Responses
Peter: do you block out the time in your day devoted to downtime? If not, it might be time to start doing that to avoid stacking on more work and robbing yourself of productivity.
What am I working on this week? This week is post-Games Week catchup, a quarterly checkpoint, and sorting out tax.
What’s inspiring me this week? The Haunting of Hill House has been sublime throughout. I’m about to hit the final episode, and I’ve got that bittersweet feeling of hitting the end of a good book. It’s making me consider putting together something more substantial video-content-wise about good horror experiences. The intensely intimate nature of the horror – akin to Stephen King’s IT with something rotten and old seeing you and targeting you, is SO. GOOD.
What action do I really need to take?
Finalising my tax return ASAP.