The Sunday Circle: 06.25.17

(To learn more about the Sunday Circle, check out author Peter M. Ball’s blog!)

It was an oddly mixed week. On the one hand, I cranked out the work I needed to get done most days, and managed to hit (and pass) the climax point in the novel, so HOORAY! The wrap-up end is in sight! I’m pretty confident I can get it done by Wednesday, which would feel pretty damn special. On the other hand, Bug was sick, then I was sick, and that knocked me off my game, so while I hit the climax on the book, I also feel like the writing was…less than it could have been. But! I’m still pretty pleased with the progress (and at having been–at least for one night–that tough as nails writer who writes with tissues stuffed up her nose to keep the snot from dripping onto her keyboard as she works. I feel like somehow that’s a horrible bucket list thing to check off on the “proof of being a serious writer” mental checklist.)

This week, I’m working on: Finishing the book. Wednesday seems a likely day to finish, since most of the chapters have been about 3k, and I’ve pretty regularly managed 1k/day throughout the project. After that, I’m taking the rest of the week off.

This week, I’m inspired by: Finished Riverdale last night, and really enjoyed it, though there were definitely a few things I wasn’t 100% on board with (Um, the whole Chuck problem, being pretty much the only young black guy being portrayed as an unrepentant sexual predator? Yeeeeeeah…not so good. And then what was with the Arch/you-know-who storyline that seemed to be driving the entire first half of the narrative and then never came up again? We spent so much time on that, and built it up so much, yet it played no role–just a dead end. Which, admittedly, in real life there are plenty of dead end leads in crime investigations, but I found in fiction–given the emphasis placed on it so early in the story–as a viewer I expected it to all tie back in, and felt a bit cheated that it didn’t.) But I am still obsessed with the way they reenvisioned the characters, and am CRAZY about how they handled Jughead (ZOMG), and even quite impressed by how they handled Archie, given that even as a tween, I thought he was a bit skeezy to be equally chasing two girls without being willing to commit to either. In this envisioning, I really liked him, flaws and all, and he seemed much more real than the character in the comics ever did. Loved Veronica’s character, and wish we’d gotten a tiny bit more of the Pussycats, but all in all, delighted by it, and really looking forward to the next season.

On a separate note: does anyone have any good recommendations for books/blog-posts/articles on the process of revising a novel? I’ve read The Weekend Novelist Rewrites the Novel which was solid, and I’ve got Charlotte Nash’s How to Edit a Novel strapped to my hip (and will be rereading), but I’m hitting that point where I am staring at this near-completed thing I’ve called forth from the depths, and the epic amount of rewriting that it’s going to need is scaring the crap out of me. Any recommendations for additional reading would be much appreciated!

What I’m avoiding: I was avoiding cleaning after a week of ughness, and the upkeep of the living spaces left primarily in the hands of a three year old, the toys kind of took over. But I managed to tackle that tonight, so that’s less crazymaking. Still lots of other tidying to do to cut down on the massive amounts of clutter that have crept back into the kitchen and elsewhere, and that’s probably going to be my avoidance issue for the week.