Daynote - Mon 27 Jul
Getting the words down in town.
Off into town again for work today, so no woodland walk to start the day. I am, however, doing my writing with a rather nice view of Edinburgh Castle.
Even though I grew up here and was quite mystified to discover not all cities had castles in the middle of them when I first left home, it's a view I don't really ever get tired of.
ON DECK: Writing is still in progress this morning, but I'm aiming for around 1,000 words. It's highly variable, how much I'll get done in a cafe session like this, but sometimes I manage to focus pretty well and get a decent word count in. We'll see how it goes. Still working on Project DRIFT and hoping to hit the 60k word mark this week. Update - got 1,056 words, not bad.
TOOLS AND PROCESS: This book is extremely wooly, compared to how I usually work. I've got a few pages of notes, a very rough plot outline I've already diverged from, an entire faction who appeared mid-draft and are absolutely nowhere in said outline and approximately 65,000 words to write with no real plan. So I'm currently deciding whether to just keep going, or whether to try and come up with a high level bullet point outline that makes a bit more sense given what I've actually written so far. No idea yet.
LISTENING: I greatly enjoyed this episode of Confessions Of A Book Collector with Erin Kelly. I've seen Erin on panels a couple of times and she's always brilliant, but this interview dives a little deeper and is worth your time.
WATCHING: A couple of episodes of HOUSE OF THE DRAGON over the weekend, which has worked really well as it focuses on the burdens of governance and court intrigue, which is definitely the strength of this show.
READING: I started on GHOST NOTES by Doug Johnstone (Bookshop, Waterstones, Amazon) over the weekend, which I've got an early copy of thanks to an event I'm doing with Doug on the 5th of August at Fringe By The Sea, and I'm having a great time. It's my first of his books, but his twentieth , and you can tell you're in experienced hands when the seventh book in a series is a brilliant read without having ready any of the preceding six.
LINK: There's some solid recommendations in this Guardian piece where various authors select their perfects books for the beach. Now I just need to find a beach.
UP NEXT: Back home tomorrow after this brief sojourn in town, then it's another head-down-write-words week. At some point I need to write the newsletter I didn't write on Friday.
Onward!