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?

Well, first day of 2017 and its time for me to finish my two weeks of relative holiday and get back to writing. On the to-do list this week: three blog posts, one short story, one chapter on Float (which will also mean spending some quality time re-reading the project and figuring out where I’m up to after a long break).

What’s inspiring me this week?

I’ve leaned heavily on the cultural consumption over the last week, finishing off movies and TV shows I’d half-watched and then left for a later date. The most interesting of them was 20,000 Days on Earth, which is billed as a documentary about Nick Cave and his work, but is probably closer to the documentary equivalent of Creative Non-Fiction.

There is a lot of artifice in the presentation, giving it a really strong visual style and approach, and it doesn’t try to hide the fact that things have been staged in order to generate specific effects. The weird thing is that it kinda works, partially because it’s Nick Cave and his work has always been touched by a streak of pompous melodrama, partially because the documentary makes it very clear that it’s got its own take on the idea of documenting that’s willing to be metaphoric and isn’t necessarily based on realism.

Not a great film, but an interesting one for that reason and I’ve been pondering it on and off.

What part of my project an I avoiding?

I really need to sit down and do my quarterly, monthly, and weekly plans at the moment, in addition to setting up the white board with hour tracking. My rhythm for this is all off thanks to the holidays, and in particular the fact that all my regular breakfast places are shut down for the next two weeks and my habit of planning over coffee isn’t quite coming together.