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’m keeping a very narrow focus in the coming week: I’m working on the first half of Warhol Sleeping‘s final act; aiming to get about a third of my conference paper written; and aiming to get a short story re-release out on the major platforms. 

What’s inspiring me this week?

The Silver Well by Kim Wilkins and Kate Forstythe, one of those seemingly rare short story collections that are built around a central concept rather than simply bringing together a series of previously published fiction. It uses pair of signature motifs–the titular well a woman in search of a place to belong–to do a deep dive into the history of the location and a particular family who lives there.

What action do I need to take?

I updated the onboarding for my newsletter this week (aka the series of emails new subscribers get), and got caught off-guard when mailchimp started sending out automated emails to current subscribers despite the fact that I’d taken them off the list. I need to keep an eye on things to ensure that everything is working as it should.

My tracking is also showing that my screen tie on the phone is creeping up to about 5 hours a day on average, with an average of 65 pickups per day. I need to look for ways to wind that back a little, especially since the bulk of it is checking data that doesn’t really need to be monitored that closely.