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?

Back on Median Survival Time this week, as I’m working towards an end-of-July point where I need to swap back to the theoretical side of the thesis. I pulled the entire thing apart over the last week and started looking for ways to tighten the action, cutting some of the filler that is currently padding the story out and leaving the scenes that are lean muscle.

What’s inspiring me this week?

Sy Montogmery’s The Soul of an Octopus, which is a kind of book-length personal essay about octopuses that weaves between scientific fact and personal experience. Much heavier on the latter by the end of the book – and there are points when things slow because of it – but I spent large chunks of the book making notes for aspects of marine biology I’m going to steal for other things in writing. As Montgomery argues, Octopuses are the closest things to aliens on planet earth; this makes them great fodder for SF writers.

What action do I need to take?

The last scene of Pixie Dust, with Whisky Chaser, continues to elude me, which means the ending I’ve got in mind probably continues to be wrong.I should go through the earlier scenes and look at what I’m building towards, then brainstorm a couple of