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?

The uni stuff is still bubbling away in the background, but the primary task this week is writing enough scenes in a zombie apocalypse novella (working title Very Bad Men) that they’ll serve as a plot skeleton. The novella is a very silly project, but I’m basically lifting the approach to writing scenes straight out of Robert Ray’s first edition of The Weekend Novelist – writing opening scenes, climaxes, end-of-act transitions and the demount before the bulk of the story.

What’s inspiring me this week?

I could quite easily spend this section enthusiastically talking about episode 8 of Riverdale, which was quite an extraordinary slice of melodrama when you’re looking at it as a writer. In the space of thirty or forty minutes, they recontextualised a half-dozen characters, changed a litany of alliances, and reversed the narrative direction of several subplots running through the show.

Honorable mention goes to the new netflix YA series, Thirteen Reasons Why, which is…well, not pleasant viewing, but a YA story that looks at suicide, abuse, and the cruelty of high school with a kind of bluntness than isn’t usually there in a series aimed at teens. It’s a show that comes with all the trigger warnings, but its great.

What part of my project an I avoiding?

I keep looking at the process of writing a lit review for my thesis thus far and throwing up my hands, to say nothing of the thesis rational I need to have done by the end of April.

And given that I’m doing this on a Sunday morning, for the first time in forever, it would appear that I need to revisit my weekly planner to make sure my deadlines are a little better managed.