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?
As the tenor of my blogging may have suggested, a lot of plans went out the window over the last week–one member of my family got diagnosed with cancer, while another fell over and broke their hip, had surgery yesterday, and now have a lengthy hospital stay while they heal and rehab. Given that it’s the family member who has advanced Parkinsons and dementia, said hospital stay and rehab is going to be all kinds of tricky.
So my main task for the coming week has moved away from “getting writing done” and towards “be part of people’s support network,” with a schedule of hospital visits and getting-people-to-specialists that cuts into th larger blocks of writing time.
I still have goals on the writing front, but my focus is pretty much lowered to “get some writing done every day.” I’m less worried about which projects I’m working on, and more worried about keeping my practice as active as I can during a week high in distraction and stress. I tote my notebook containing my thesis draft with me when I’m on the move, so it tends to get the bulk of my attention by virtue of being the easiest to access.
What’s inspiring me this week?
My reading took a big hit over the last seven days, but we finished the second season of The Dragon Prince on Netflix. This show remains a glorious experience, taking the very familiar tropes of a D&D style epic quest fantasy and quietly updating them so they’re fresh and new. The second season has some great fantasy action sequences–the dragon vs castle fight is brilliant–and the way the narrative pushes characters to make choices they don’t want to make is just great, great storytelling.
What action do I need to take?
I cancelled a lot of stuff that was easy to cancel when my dad went into hospital, but there’s still a couple of more complex commitments that were both not-so-easy-to-cancel, but also not-high-on-my-priority-list-now that need to be rescheduled. Beyond that, the coming week is one where I get done what I get done.
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
One Response
It’s been a while between drinks here, but I’m back. I’m so sorry to hear about your sister Peter. Crossing fingers and sending thoughts her way for a positive turnaround. Godspeed with keeping the regular practice up, too. While I’ve been moving things forward lately, I’ve been finding sticking to the daily minimal practice a bit of a challenge. I hope the week treats you and yours kindly.
What am I working on this week?
This is the second week of my R&D stretch for the quarter. The first week got a little interrupted by incoming client gigs. It’s been a little thin of late, so I wasn’t in a position to delay or turn down that work. ESPECIALLY with one of the gigs being performance capture, which is the kind of work I’m actively chasing.
So this week I’m continuing to learn Da Vinci Resolve (to replace Adobe After Effects & Adobe Premiere with a more cost-effective option without sacrificing any power), continuing to work on narrative structure (digesting notes on Story and breaking ground on an audio drama project), and a deep delve on pirates.
What’s inspiring me this week?
I’ve been watching through the nine episode series Crossbones and absolutely adoring it. I can’t comprehend how Black Sails was the more popular series of the two (except for possibly being longer?) because Crossbones outshines it in most regards – the performances are wonderful, the writing is exquisite, and most scenes shift into feeling more like theatre with quick-paced (and well written) banter between two characters. Malkovich’s Edward Teach is fascinating to watch – he’s such an active listener as a performer that he’s often more interesting when reacting rather than driving the scene. I’d expected gleefully cheesy Malkovich a’la Con Air, but there’s none of that. And the show lacks the gaudy pasted-on-HBO-allure that Black Sails reached for which always left it feeling tawdry.
What action do I need to take?
I need to coalesce those notes from Story into a more distilled, organised form and start looking at a broad premise for the audio drama project. Also, move forward with reading Art of Story now that I’ve got the understanding from McKee to help me.