Daynote - Fri 4 Sep

Another gloriously anachronistic typewriter stock photo this morning, as I'm yet to get out for a walk (see below in Tools and Process for why). I don't even own a typewriter. But I like 'em. If I ever have shelf space not taken up by books, I might get one for purely ornamental purposes. They're cool.

I also woke up this morning to a podcast episode from Quick Book Reviews including SOLITARY AGENTS in the best books of the year so far, which was a lovely start to the day:

ON DECK: Today is a full Writing Day, so I'm focusing on clearing the decks on two projects - first of all getting the Project BRIGHT treatment finished, then starting on the sample. I won't finish that today, but I want to get a bit of momentum.

Then this afternoon, I'm doing a bunch of prep work for something I'm hoping to put out over the weekend. Bit of an experiment on my part, that I'm a bit nervous (but also excited) about. We'll see how it goes.

TOOLS AND PROCESS: It's over eight months since I went part-time at my day job (I'm going to do a one-year retrospective on that early next year) and I quite deliberately didn't over-structure or over-plan or over-routinise these days, because I think it would have been very easy to overload Fridays as the 'day that will solve all my problems' and end up doing a lot of things not very well.

However, I also didn't put enough structure in, I'm now realising - my regular workdays are very structured because they have to be if I'm going to consistently get enough work done, but I've definitely realised I need to have some of that rigour on Fridays too, otherwise it is very easy to fritter away half the day doing stuff that feels sort-of urgent and not actually produce much in the way of new creative work. I fully did intend to use Fridays to manage some of the admin and non-writing work I have to do (mainly to reclaim some of my evenings and weekends), but Parkinson's Law applies - if I give significant time to that kind of work, it will expand to fill that time and more.

So! I'm going into the last third of the year with three clear rules for myself:

• Writing first - just like Monday to Thursday, I'll put writing at the top of the todo list, so that every day of the working week I'm getting some words drafted or edited.
• Measuring effort - one of my original breakthroughs was figuring out that targeting time spent was a better motivator for me than words written. And I've kind of been kidding myself that Fridays were different, and 'write 3,000 words today' was a valid goal for me. Turns out it's (still) not a good way to motivate myself and crawling my way to higher word counts is painful and counterproductive. But if I target four hours over 2-3 sprints, I'll normally hit those kind of word counts and then some.
• Calendar blocking - A wide open day is a day that will disappear before you know it. So I block out the writing sprints (they're more like ambles than sprints, I'm writing for 90-120 minutes in a block) AND I block out the time for non-writing work and admin. And I try pretty hard to stick to those blocks (and take a proper lunch break).

Today's the first day of applying these rules, so we'll see how it goes.

LISTENING: I enjoyed listening back this morning to the Damage Assessment episode that I did with the team from our most recent Narrative Damage playthrough, 'From The Dust'. Here's the video version:

WATCHING: More of SILO last night and thank goodness there's some actual plot movement. Only a couple of episodes left in this season and I'm enjoying the ramp up to some big reveals.

READING: More of JOE COUNTRY by Mick Herron (Bookshop, Waterstones, Amazon) last night, though only a bit as I was up late doing prep work for the thing I'm launching this weekend.

LINK: In memory of Wendell Berry, here's a beautiful poem: How To Be A Poet (thank you to Valerie for sending me the link).

UP NEXT: An exciting new venture, launching this weekend. Keep your eyes peeled for a post (and email, if you're a subscriber). If you like this slightly longer Friday daynote, then it may well be something you're interested in.

And next week, I'm writing more pitches. Yay, pitches. I do like writing them though - each idea I can write up into a 2-3 page document is a continuing reassurance that yes, in fact, my brain is capable of producing new stories.

Onward!