2024-W16 EOW Report

Highlights This Week

• No changes from last week - new full-time contract still onboarding and training (and a lot of strategic work with a consultant), while fiction writing was reduced to 30m a night and sometimes none at all. The adjusting continues. I couldn’t find the energy to wake up on Sunday for MRK’s MMW again for the second week.
• However, I did get up early for a Garage Fiction check in with Olivia and Bryan. L.L. was busy this sessions. We got deep into our personal lives. Which was something I mentioned we started doing a few weeks ago. Plus, Olivia and I are taking even more steps towards re-launching the Garage Fiction Podcast. It’s not a super high priority for us as it’s “not writing”, but it could be fun and hold us accountable towards writing more.
• I tried starting Fallout S1 (2024), but I dunno man. I think I’m still recovering from Money Heist P5 (2021). I don’t think I’ve felt this huge sense of missing from a group of characters in a long time. I’m trying to think of a TV series where no longer hanging out with the characters has hit me this hard when it wrapped up… and the first and only thing that comes up is Angel (1999-2004). And what’s more, in the past week, as I’ve thought about the show more and more, I understand and realize that there are a LOT of plot holes, a lot of contrived plot points, and a lot of scenes where they did it because it looked and felt cool but was totally out-of-character… but you genuinely fall in love with the characters and you don’t want their camaraderie to end. I mean, is that it? It’s the friendship and relationship and how tight they are that you end up missing? I’m thinking about all my other favorite TV shows like Breaking Bad (2008-2013), Mad Men (2007-2015), and Battlestar Galactica (2004-2009)… and I don’t miss the characters as much as a show like Money Heist (2017-2021). All those shows delivered a satisfying enough ending, and wrapped up their character arcs… so what is it about Money Heist and Angel? And as I type this, I think about Community (2009-2015) and The Good Place (2016-2020), where the missing of characters wasn’t as strong, but still felt… I’m starting to realizing that what I wrote a few sentences back… that the camaraderie, the team, the “work family” as Sorkinson would call it, or the “family of loners” as I called it back in the Buffy and Angel days… that that is what makes it click for me. Frisson tingling in my gut right now. Yes. That’s it. That’s what I love. This is a great epiphany and revelation. I should pay attention to this when I work on a series. Make sure I really focus on the “work family”.

Project Status Dashboard

The following are ongoing fiction writing projects broken down to what stage they’re in. Legend in footnote¹.

EOW Time Tracking

OK. New format this week. Going to start tracking actions (axn) and emotions (emo). Aiming for 30 minutes of fiction work a day. Just thirty minutes. AXN emoji legend in footnote².

Four Thousand Weeks

The new contract onboarding and training continues. Lots of work. It’s good I’m engaged here, but the long days of meetings is draining. I know two things will eventually happen. One, my stamina for a full-time position will strengthen, and two, the meetings will slow down and I can do more deep work (which, for me, isn’t draining and actually quite restorative). But that’s really this week.

Book Reading

• Lots of finishing this week: 1. Mary Beard’s SPQR (2015), 2. Pride and Prejudice (1813), commentary here, and 3. The Best of Gamut (2024), commentary here. And then promptly started my first ever “The Great Courses”, The Age Of Henry VIII (2003), with Dale Hoak as lecturer.
• MRK SSC group has a “Crafty Talk” this Friday on novellas. Don’t know if I’ll finish them all, but looking to read Premee Mohamed’s And What Can We Offer You Tonight (2021), C.L. Polk’s Even Though I Knew the End (2022), and P. Djèlí Clark’s Ring Shout (2020).
• Knocked off two more chapters of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005).

Archive of all EOW reports here