Daynote - Mon 16 Mar 2026
Back to the woods.
I chanced it to see if I could manage my usual morning walk today. I'm now icing my foot again, so the answer is 'yes, but with a cost'. But it hurts less than yesterday and I was extremely glad to get outside, move my body and breathe some fresh air.
ON DECK: I tried something new this morning, which was to write on two different projects in one session. I'm working on a medium length short story and just trying to push it along a few hundred words each week day, so I'm doing it as a wee sweetener at the end of a longer session working on my current novel-length project, codenamed VAULT. I got 1,009 words on the novel and 321 words on the short, for a total of 1,330 all-in. Not bad.
TOOLS AND PROCESS: I've never done this before, working on drafting two different things in the same writing session. I have, occasionally, mixed edits on one project with drafting on another, or drafted on two projects with a break in the middle. I think it's possible to do this because the two projects are very, very different. One is a multi-POV, fast-moving spy thriller. The other is a single POV, much more slow-moving short story with a very distinctive character voice.
I have a sample size of one day, but so far it seems to be working well? I won't be doing it for long, since the short is only going to be 7,000 - 8,000 words or so. At my current pace I'll finish the draft in a couple of weeks. But it's good to know this is something I can do, even on a day when I'm working the day job.
LISTENING: I really enjoyed this interview with Dave Hutchinson (who I know from his excellent Fractured Europe series of SF spy thrillers) talking about his love of Le Carré on the Le Carré Cast. His new book THE ESSENCE sounds fantastic.
WATCHING: Twelve years after the hype, we started watching TRUE DETECTIVE last night. It holds up and the hype was validated. I hear opinions are mixed on subsequent seasons, but so far I'm loving the first one. It's amazing how much it already feels like a historical artefact though. 2014 was a different time.
READING: Still reading THE INFINITE STATE by Richard Swan (Bookshop.org, Waterstones, Amazon) and things are really starting to shift in the plot. It's great fun. For bleakly dystopian values of fun.
LINK: I enjoyed this piece from the Honest Editor on the myths about the London Book Fair - when I first got started these events were a complete mystery to me, so a guide like this is always going to be useful.
UP NEXT: It's a quiet one this week, just making steady progress. Hoping to hit 80k overall on VAULT and perhaps 3k or so on the short story. But other than that, I'm going to ease gently back into my walking routine (hopefully) and keep moving things forward.
Onward!