Daynote - Mon 24 Aug

I'm in Edinburgh again today for the day job and it's a bright, sunny, slightly cool day - the best possible weather. Sadly not going to a bunch of book festival events (maybe next year) but it's still nice to have a brief trip into the city. I suspect I'll go and sit in the Gardens and have a sad meal deal for lunch. Soak up the Fringe-y atmosphere. I did forget to bring a book though, boo.

ON DECK: Friday's editing session was an absolute marathon, getting me from p43 to p201 (158 pages!) and over the halfway mark for the book as a whole. I'm going to be cutting whole chapters later, so I suspect it's actually a little over halfway.

This morning was a bit less (obviously, as it was an hour compared to 7+ hours on Friday) but I got 19 pages squared away. I'm also heading into the fast-moving part of the book with lots of shorter chapters, which definitely helps with the sense of progression.

TOOLS AND PROCESS: My hybrid edit (line, structural and read-through combined) is still going well. Slowly, but well. And the feeling of knowing everything you've gone over is pretty much nailed is a good one. Feeling fairly optimistic about this book, which is nice.

LISTENING: Really enjoyed today's episode of In My Good Books with Sarah Pinborough, who's appearing at Bloody Scotland in less than a month (!) which, wow, that has crept up on me. Unfortunately her panel clashes with the debut prize panel, which I really want to see, but this interview is a good substitute.

WATCHING: We watched THE STING recently, which I'd never seen before - what an amazing movie? Just a really well-made, tense-but-funny con movie. Not sure how I managed to miss it. Turns out a lot of these classic films are pretty good, who knew.

READING: More of CRY PILOT by Joel Dane - (Bookshop, Waterstones, Amazon) over the weekend, which continues to delight. Definitely reminds me of the Frontlines series, but significantly weirder.

KIT: I had my first run over the weekend with a running belt, rather than a vest, and it was absolutely fantastic.

So much less sweaty than a nylon vest. These things are incredibly tight (to stop them bouncing about/slipping off) but once they're on they're really comfortable. This one is from Decathlon and it's really well made. I used to be a 'do lots of research, buy the best possible thing I can afford in the category' kind of guy, but these days I tend to find the best entry level thing I can that actually has what I need. Sometimes you end up buying something a bit crap as a result, but happy to say this belt isn't, I'm very pleased with it.

I managed my first 7k run in 40 minutes wearing this belt (with the help of a very good playlist) so consider that a ringing endorsement.

LINK: A good post from The Honest Editor on the vexed subject of blurbs and blurbing. I have blurbed and been blurbed and it's always very nice to both feel like it's appreciated and to be the one doing the appreciating, but wow it can be a lot of work and a lot of feeling bad when you turn people down. Still, I do what I can and I'm deeply thankful when other writers do the same for me.

UP NEXT: A regular work week after today, and I'm hoping to maybe get to the end of the edit on Friday, if I can keep up the momentum during the intervening days.

It would be very nice to have a bit of time left in my edit to do the useful things like writing up a timeline (extremely useful during copyedits to double check things) and doing a last pass for crutch words and repetitions. But the end is in sight. After which, of course, I'll go back to working on DRIFT.

Onward!