Daynote - Fri 21 Nov

A very chilly morning today and our first proper frost of the year. I was out at an event in Glasgow and got home late, so I didn't venture out into the cold, but I'm enjoying looking out at it this morning.

The event at Ibrox Library went really well! I, of course, forgot to take any pictures. But it was lovely to see Natalie Jayne Clark again (we were on the Bloody Scotland Debut Prize shortlist together) and she did a great job of moderating myself, Neil Broadfoot and Andrew Raymond. It was a brilliant discussion and the staff and patrons of Ibrox Library were really welcoming and asked lots of good questions.

I also visited a couple of bookshops in Glasgow early in the day and I was immensely gratified to see really nice stacks of A RELUCTANT SPY at both of them. A very nice way to spend my lunch break indeed.

ON DECK: More outlining this morning, including cracking the nut of the main underlying plot point that will drive all the action. Sometimes, midway through the stream-of-consciousness treatment style outline I need to stop and do some bullet points purely to work out the logistics and underlying mechanics of a book, which is what I did this morning. And I'm pleased with the solution, I think it'll work really well. So PROJECT VAULT now has a fulcrum I can balance everything else around.

TOOLS AND PROCESS: There was a bit of a discussion on Edinburgh SFF yesterday and this morning about font sizes and screen setups (if you like niche discussions about the practicalities of writing, this is the Discord server for you!) and I had cause to share my 400%, green-on-green Scrivener composition mode setup again. Here's the basic view:

And here's the 'meta' view when I'm working on a scene and need to reference other materials, like the scene synopsis, another whole scene in the quick reference window on the right, and the overall word count on the left.

The customisability of Scrivener is one of the reasons I am ride-or-die for it as a writing tool and I love working in this view. I'd estimate I spend 80-90% of my time this view when I'm writing a book.

LISTENING: A brilliant episode of Page One Extra with Richard Swan this morning - it's fascinating and encouraging to hear from someone making a multi-genre, multi-strand career work (since that's what I hope and plan to do). And Richard is always good value on a podcast.

WATCHING: I was in Glasgow last night, so I didn't watch anything on the tellybox, but I did see this new trailer for Project Hail Mary, which I thought did a much better job of getting the tone of the book across. It still (bafflingly) spoils the major twist of the book (so don't watch it if you are concerned about spoilers) but it at least does so with humour and style.

READING: A (lot) more beta reading yesterday. I really need to settle down and finish off some of these a bit more systematically because they are piling up in a slightly concerning fashion given how late in the year we are.

LINK: I cannot for the life of me remember if I already posted this, but this is a great Bluesky thread on how to pitch non-fiction essays.

UP NEXT: T'is the weekend and I will be visiting with family and trying to clear some of my slightly silly reading queue before we get into December. December is often a bit of a write-off for me reading and writing-wise because of events, finishing up stuff at the day job and family time, so I like to go into the last month of the year as lean as possible on secondary commitments. Which means I should probably stop saying yes to/actively soliciting blurb, beta and proof reads. I'll never learn.

Onward!