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 setting aside the next weeks weeks to do rewrites on the Flotsam/Keith Murphy series, with the coming week focused on adding some scenes to Exile in order to balance out the narrative–fleshing out a subplot that got truncated by the word-count limits back when I first wrote the series; adding in a little more scaffolding for the series based upon my PhD research.
At the same time, I’m trying to lock down the branding of the series on the cover and blurb front.
What’s inspiring me this week?
I spent the weekend reading both ReWork and It Doesn’t Have To Be Crazy At Work by owners of 37 Signals and the Signal-to-Noise blog, Jason Fried and Darren Hansson. They’re both short books, but they pack a wealth of information into a slim page-count, and there’s a definite philosophy at work that’s interesting to read.
They may be oriented towards business processes–and they’ve definitely been inspiring in terms of helping me clarify some stuff around my long-term ideas for Brain Jar–but there’s also something about the way they’re written that’s got me thinking about writing books and essays again.
What action do I need to take?
My end-of-semester marking lands tomorrow at 4:00 PM, which means I need to start finding time in my daily schedule to read and assess a small pile of student work. The really important thing here will be starting early and getting small increments done every day, rather than trying to process everything in a two or three-day rush.
Unfortunately, embracing that daily process is hard, so I really need to monitor my habits and make sure it’s getting 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
2 Responses
Looking forward to seeing what you do with the Keith Murphy series, Pete.
I’ve been a bit short on cognitive surplus lately. I think this is a combo of pain management plus shifting roles in the day job to officially leading a team and trying to design all the stuff we’ll be building in the near future. I had a minor identity crisis last week when I realised I may never be a simple software developer again. It was a weird threshold to have crossed.
What am I working on this week?
Part 3 of the new novella/reader magnet. Had a slow start on it, derailed probably due to the lack of cognitive surplus as per above. But I got Jessica through the first chapter and regained some momentum now.
What’s inspiring me this week?
Coming across the metaphor of the Dark Forest as applied to the internet. This is a curious idea and it’s helped me think about the social channels I’m on and how I’m using them. My newsletter has largely taken the place of a blog and that’s an idea worth expanding upon. I’ve also started consciously filing away links I find interesting, for posting on my barely-visible Facebook page.
As for fiction, I have a sample in mind I might find interesting. There’s a few pieces of non-fiction I’d like to dive into but I’m not sure that’s wise given where I am with the day job at the moment.
What action do I need to take?
a) Get a release follow-up newsletter ready. I have some promotion obligations to meet with it, amongst other things. Which reminds me, I still need to port my list over from Mailchimp. Going to ask my technical question of Mailerlite support.
b) Chip away at the few remaining pages on my website that haven’t been converted to the new theme. I think the individual book pages still have the old covers.
c) I still haven’t taken that networking opportunity from last week. This week, I MUST.
The switch to management is weird as hell. It took me ages to wrap my head around it the first time it happened, and I didn’t have much of a team to work with. The exciting part was learning a new skillset, and figuring out that it was basically problem solving on a much bigger scale (which I dug).
I can recommend some of the books that helped me move into the strategic/management space, if it might be useful.