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’m kicking off a six-week project sprint tomorrow morning, throwing the bulk of my focus into getting Hell Track finished and off my to-do list. I’ve set myself a benchmark of about fifteen scenes to get through over the next five days, which is more than I’m used to doing, but I’ve also cleared of most distractions until the sprint is over.

What’s inspiring me this week?

I spent some quality time with Matthew Rielly’s Hover Car Racer this week, taking notes about it’s structure and the way it builds tension in the racing scenes. It started out serialised on his website back in the early days of the internet, building in discrete episodes that close down, and I’m really interested in the way that form has impacted on the novel structure. I’m also curious about Rielly’s approach to action scenes – races are a tough thing to render in prose fiction, so it’s intriguing to see how he gets around the fact that everything needs to be contextualised in prose.

What action do I need to take?

I packed on a little extra weight over summer, as one does when deadlines and holidays coincide, but it’s starting to have a really negative effect in terms of my apnea making me tired and vague from about 9:30 PM. This leaves me with two things that absolutely need to start kicking in: paying closer attention to the sleep window I’m leaving myself every night, and working to ease off the weight and get my sleep a little more solid.