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 locking down the first act of Wail this week–there’s a bunch of scenes already down, but I’m coming up on the moment when the story transitions and escalates into the second act through the discovery of bodies and the reveal of the “monster-of-the-week” at the heart of this novella.
Wail is slower to write than I’d been hoping–I tend to average 1,200 words a day instead of 2,000–but a lot of that comes down to managing continuity and making decisions in that regard. Occasionally it slows down due to research, such as the discovery that the timeline I’d set up means that one of the recurring characters is now six years past the mandatory retirement age, and thus needs to be handled differently now.
What’s inspiring me this week?
I fired up Mark Waid’s 2012 run on The Indestructible Hulk this week, and it’s both spectacular and useful-for-the-thesis. The great thing about comic books is their long-term storytelling–characters have been around for decades at this point, fulfilling certain archetypes. Every now and then a writer comes along and looks at a character in a new way, shifting the position of the lamp so you see a whole new set of shadows and surfaces that were hidden in the previous portrayals. Waid does that by asking a simple question: what happens if Bruce Banner stops looking for a cure for the Hulk, and does everything he can with his genius to help humanity while he’s human?
In four words–Hulk Smash, Banner Build–Waid defines an entirely new direction for the character without making any fundamental changes to the backstory or the personality that break the suspension of disbelief. It’s a neat trick, and one that’s nearly impossible to pull off outside of comics where the long-term storytelling has built these kinds of iconic protagonists.
What action do I need to take?
I acquired a new phone this week, converting from android to iPhone for the first time. This seems like a minor thing but has resulted in all sorts of hiccups as I try to adapt to a new lay-out and look up app passwords I haven’t had to remember for nearly three years. Similarly, the layouts are just different enough that I can’t mimic the old set-up on the new phone, leaving all my instinctive process around things like posting to social media or making notes wrong.
I really need to sit down and set the new phone up properly–set up all the apps correctly, position them in places where they’re going to be useful–and take a look at any new tools that I can upload given the change in platform.
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
5 Responses
Sorry this went up so late, folks. I thought I’d scheduled it for the usual time, but it seems to have sat in the not-yet-posted pile instead.
I’m here, at last! All the best moving forward with Wail this week, Peter. 🙂
What am I working on this week?
It’s preschool season, which means a guaranteed 2 HOURS of writing time! It’s…beautiful, and a bit overwhelming, but I’m loving it. So this week, I’m starting Draft 2 of the dark fantasy YA novel about a spunky con-artist trying to rescue her sickly brother from a malicious clockwork cult leader (codename: Frosthaven). I’ve got a ton of index cards, lots of scenes, and am trying really hard not to think about how much work it’s actually going to be. My working goal is 1k/day like the first draft, which worked pretty well, and I’ve got more plotted out this time, so that hopefully won’t leave me creatively drained as much.
What’s inspiring me this week?
Over the past week, I read Saga: Volume 1 by Brian K. Vaughn and illustrated by Fiona Staples, and you guys…I’m in love. I didn’t even know I needed this story in my life until I finally picked it up at my local library, and I’m losing my mind over it. ROBOT MONARCHIES? *dies happy*
Also just started readinging through Work Clean as mentioned in previous Sunday Circles, and I’m loving it, too. There’s something about the concept of mise-en-place that I find incredibly satisfying on a day-to-day basis. I haven’t applied it much to writing-work as yet, though like The Clockwork Muse I can see how it could be usefully applied, but it’s been a small revolution in my kitchen in terms of keeping on top of dishes (a perpetual bane and source of stress in my day-to-day life) and cleaning as I go. My kitchen has seriously never been this consistently tidy–it’s shocking. And with so little adjustment necessary–amazing.
What action do I need to take?
This week is really all about committing to the habits I want to have moving forward into this new phase: walking every morning, getting a solid two hours of work in, reading when I say I will, and practice writing every day for a little bit. I need to lock these habits in early so they stick around when other challenges and schedule changes inevitably arise.
Love that you’re digging into Work Clean. I’ve started using the concept of recipes with regularly performed complex tasks, and it’s really helping!
Frosthaven sounds grand! I hope you’re able to find consistency in moving it forward! Be kind to yourself, and can’t wait to hear more about it!
Thanks Kevin! I just finished the segment on reasons why projects languish unfinished, and I think just about every one of the reasons he lists apply to me! So I’ve got some good things to work on this coming week. Hope all’s well with you and yours!
Peter: are you working primarily on a Mac or PC for your main desktop/laptop now? If so, it might be worth thinking about Omnifocus for task planning. If not, ignore me on that one!
One thing I definitely CAN recommend though, is a gradual transfer to a password management app. If you add new passwords on a case by case basis the transfer can be relatively smooth, and something like 1Password can sync using Dropbox between desktop and iPhone. It saves SO MUCH TIME.
Hope Wail goes smoothly!