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?

This week I start the drafting process on Wail. I kinda hesitate to mention this one–I’ve got all sorts of superstitions about working on a third Miriam Aster novella given the difficulties I’ve had in the past, but the upside of doing the PhD has been the opportunity to sit down and think about why I had so much trouble using Horn as the basis for a series. 

What’s inspiring me this week?

John Truby’s The Anatomy of Story. A lot of books on story tend to fall back on the three-act structure and its variations, and Truby touches upon that here, but he’s less interested in the nuts and bots of who does what and more interested in tracking story as means of exploring a problem of morality. He takes a close look at what it means to build towards the moral choices that are made a the climax of a story, and how to build a narrative that will support it. 

What action do I need to take?

I really need to sit down and re-read the second Aster book, Bleed, which I wrote approximately a decade ago and remember far less than I do Horn. Currently I’ve been flicking through the pick up certain points–character names, double-checking locations–but there’s all sorts of minutia in there I need to check for the Wail draft with very little idea of where, exactly, it might be.