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?
This week, thesis work and writing take a back seat to clearing a bunch of marking of the decks and preparing for the next few weeks of classes. The first half of this semester’s teaching was dominated by books I knew really well, but the back half involves two books I’ve never read (Gone Girl, Eleanor and Park), and one book that I’ve not read in a lot of detail (A Game of Thrones), so I’ve got a bunch of reading and annotating ahead of me before the semester returns from break.
What’s inspiring me this week?
I’ve been watching bits of Jane the Virgin lately, well into the second season, and I’m incredibly impressed with the way they make use of the omnipresent narrator to generate effects within the narrative. It’s an incredibly smart show that’s hyper-aware of the genre and how to both deliver upon- and innovate the generic expectations. Their ability to quietly set stuff up in the A-Plot and then use it to deliver a surprising pay-off in the B-plot is fantastic, and I keep wanting to pull episodes apart to better understand their structure.
What action do I need to take?
Having consolidated all the unfinished drafts in on my various hard drives, it’s time to start taking a closer look at all the unfinished drafts I’ve got floating around in notebooks. There’s a small stack of projects that never actually made it onto a computer, including one finished novel draft and a handful of novellas. Since a lot of the big, thinky work this week will be spent on marking, it seems like typing these up and logging them could be a useful task for the more-braindead parts of my working day.
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
Two quick questions for you, Peter::
1) How did you go with putting your virtual drive together to back things up across machines?
2) How do you typically recognise/monitor energy levels to realise that you’d be better off doing low-energy work, rather than beating your head against more demanding work?
I am BACK, after the whirlwind of GDC, and then GDC flu taking me out for two weeks after the convention. (turns out waking up at 2AM soaked in sweat isn’t jetlag, it’s the body’s fever response trying to burn out a virus.
What am I working on this week?
Given that post-GDC represents a line in the sand, I’ve rejigged my calendar and started a new quarter, so this week is a fresh quarterly review to plan for moving forward. I’m also doing a lot of post-GDC follow up with people I’ve met at GDC, and cold-calling contacts I didn’t get a chance to meet at GDC. Trying to get a video series back up and running this week too, given that it is the simplest form of creating narrative content I’ve got at the moment – no other moving parts except me.
What’s inspiring me this week?
I’m floating a little bit at the moment when it comes to stimulus, largely due to the disruption of GDC and illness. So I’m not digging into anything particularly satisfying at the moment. I have managed to catch up on The Good Place and am absolutely in love with that show.
What action do I need to take?
Kicking off serious narrative skill building. So I’m looking at getting back to Wonderbook this week as a starting point, and over the next couple of weeks starting to sit down and deconstruct the structure and writing behind Young Justice.
What could I use some help with?
This might be a repeat question, but recommendations on resources for writing better dialogue would be FANTASTIC.