Daynote - Wed 10th Jul 2024

Another lovely blurb, this time from Sunyi Dean, who wrote the phenomenal novel THE BOOK EATERS and is one half of the excellent writing podcast Publishing Rodeo.

ON DECK: I worked on something new this morning! Hooray! Got 728 words drafted, about 80% of an outline for a new short piece tentatively called Ridealong (I don't generally bother with codenames for short pieces because I don't work on them long enough, haha). It's not actual draft words, but I'm feeling out the story, so it is prose of a sort. I think I have maybe two scenes left to outline, then I'll start drafting. There's a good chance I'll have it done by the middle of next week or so. Ah, it feels so good to be coming up with new stuff.

LISTENING: Sometimes when I get in the zone I put my headphones in and then forget to actually play any music. Today was one of those days.

WATCHING: We finished LOWER DECKS last night. Fantastic. It was left open for a fifth season. I really hope it comes back.

READING: Flying through the second half of MOSCOW X. I expect I'll finish it today. I'm not putting any new books on my bedside TBR stack until I've read all the ones already there (this is an attempt to somewhat curb my tendency to hop around and not really commit to any books and thus read ten pages of thirty books and not finish any of them. So the next book up will possibly be a Mick Herron (SPOOK STREET, as I'm one book ahead of the Apple TV series) or perhaps THE EMOTIONAL CRAFT OF FICTION, a short craft book by veteran agent Donald Maass that Sunyi Dean recommended to me. Might read that one first since it's shorter.

UP NEXT: Finishing the outline for Ridealong and then starting work on the drafting. Very exciting!