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 started re-building the final act of Warhol Sleeping on Friday–one of the inevitable side-effects of fleshing out the first two acts is figuring out the stuff that’s wrong in the last, or as it appears in my rewrite notes: if you put a cyberpunk ziggurat on the mantle in the first act….

This is also a function of reworking the books role a little–I’m going back to this particular setting in a few books time, which means the world building needs a little more detail.

I’m also preparing a bunch of short fiction projects for release–I’ve spent the last week studying newsletter processes and how to do certain things more effectively, and the disconnect between primarily selling fiction and offering non-fiction as the bonus for newsletter subscribers has sunk in.

What’s inspiring me this week?

This week I finished reading Joe Abercrombie’s Sharp Ends, collecting together a bunch of his short fiction. I’d been dipping in and out of this book for months, because it distinguishes itself from most short fiction collections by featuring a whole suite of stories set in the same universe without specifically being focused on similar characters.

It’s a really interesting reading experience because of that–there are some connections that you pick up in the stories themselves, but others that are enhanced by familiarity with Abercrombie’s novel-length work and the connects that are forged there. Since my reading of the longer works is haphazard, there were a bunch of stories where I felt like I was missing the zing that the recognition usually brought.

Intriguing on thesis level, but also in terms of how writing series starts to tie together.

What action do I need to take?

There’s a bunch of cover-design and blurbing on the horizon, much of which deserves more than one draft before I finalise things. I need to do a full list of everything on the docket, then work out a process to ensure that roughs and finals happen in an ordered way.

Similarly, my Brain Jar Press files are in a state of chaos at the moment–my early organisation hasn’t held over as I picked up the pace of doing stuff, which means that I need to do a considered sorting-and-arranging so things are in logical and consistent places.