Daynote - Mon 24 Nov

I stayed up too late playing ARC Raiders again last night, so I'd planned to skip my walk in any case. But when you wake up and you can actually hear the rain lashing the windows, it feels like a vindicated decision. I had a nice weekend, visiting family and then yesterday doing a bit of DIY around the house.

This week is my last event of November, catching up with most of the Bloody Scotland Debut Prize shortlisters at Waterstones in Edinburgh this Wednesday!

If you're thinking of coming along to that, please do book a ticket as they're going fast. See you there!

ON DECK: Still working on the PROJECT VAULT outline and it's a bit stop-start. I'm jumping ahead and writing out some key plot points for reference, then stopping my stream-of-consciousness treatment style drafting to figure out the big plot beats in bullet points first. The usual slightly chaotic 'figuring out a whole book' stuff that I do every time, to be honest. I haven't really got a fixed way of doing this, just whatever works.

TOOLS AND PROCESS: Eventually, of course, I'll put this into a Scrivener project, which is where I do a lot of the actual scene sequencing and structuring, copying and pasting from my bullet point outlines and treatment into the Outline view in Scrivener, then adding some beat bullet points to each scene. I tend to do the heavy lifting of that (adding all the scenes) up front and the detailed bullets later as I approach the scenes in the draft. I'll also get my Aeon Timeline file started, usually just with the big dates that matter to the story, usually in the past of the characters. This is mainly to make sure all the dates and

LISTENING: This episode of the Writing Routine podcast with Caroline Corcoran was a fascinating look at how a journalistic career can prepare you for the challenges of working as a novelist.

WATCHING: We caught the latest episode of PLURIBUS over the weekend and it's really fascinating how many new questions it manages to pose per episode, while remaining extremely compelling. Fantastic stuff.

READING: I spent pretty much the whole weekend beta reading, when I wasn't out and about (or playing ARC Raiders). So, no recommendations, at least for books you can buy. But I suspect both of the books I'm beta reading will be on shop shelves before long.

LINK: Fascinating story about how novelist and games writer Naomi Alderman bought her old company, Six to Start, which published Zombies, Run! Very cool to see someone make such an interesting move.

UP NEXT: More outlining, probably for the remainder of this week. There's some discussions ongoing that will affect what and when I pick up once this outline is done, but I hope and suspect I'll be spending the last few weeks of the year embarking on a new draft (PROJECT VAULT). We'll see how it goes.

And, of course, second reminder, I'll be at Waterstones West End this Wednesday with the Bloody Scotland folks. Hope to see you there.

Onward!