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 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.