The Sunday Circle: 04.09.17

(To learn more about The Sunday Circle, check out author Peter M. Ball’s website, found here!)

Didn’t get a chance to jump on the Sunday Circle train last week, but it was a good week. I finally officially broke ground on new territory in Act 2, passing the point where I’d written to before in Version 1.0 of the novel project, which felt great. I also got a lot more reading done. I think realizing that evenings weren’t going to be good reading times made me reconsider when during the day I could try to fit some in helped, and then it’s kind of a reading-begets-reading kind of thing. When I was reading more during the day, I had more compulsion to do it in the evenings too.

What am I working on this week?: This week, I am charging right along on my 1k/day goal for the novel. I may need to spend some time tomorrow mapping out exactly what happens in the next chapter, and I’m starting to feel the itch to hopscotch between scenes, which I may or may not indulge in at this point. My end-goal for the month is to hopefully hit and pass the midpoint, but there’s a lot of text to tackle to do that, so I really just need to chug away and keep my head down.

What’s inspiring me this week?: Pen and ink (and watercolor!) drawings like the ones done by John R. Neill in the Wizard of Oz books (like this one!) I’ve always admired them, but lately (perhaps it was my husband hooking me on fountain pens), I’ve been totally enraptured by this kind of artwork.

Also just started reading The Walls Around Us by Nova Ren Suma, which is a wonderful example of how the tone of a story can be set so subtly by word choice and metaphor. I mean, this one is eeeeeeerie, but I’m totally delighted by it.

What am I avoiding this week?: Oh lots of household things that I should have done, but keep putting off, but creatively, am managing to power through rough days and still get my butt in the chair to work, which has been something of a minor miracle, this week.