Back to the routine this morning and I'm delighted. It was a delightfully chilly and beautiful morning in the woods and down by the water today. I surprised a deer coming around a corner in the path and I swear it hit at least six feet off the ground bounding across in front of me.
I finished my proofread on Friday, got my acknowledgements written (then had to send two further updates when I remembered more people I wanted to thank) and can now consider A TRAITOR'S CALL officially put to bed from a 'writing it' point of view.
I will see it again probably one more time, to double-check that all the proofing comments have been taken into the draft, but that's an hour or two's work. So the next time I'll be properly working on this book again is pre-release promotion!
Feels good to have another one in the can.
I also got some very good news over the weekend, which might open up another wee strand in the old author career. More on that as soon as I can talk about it.
ON DECK: No actual drafting this morning, but I did start writing the detailed outline for the fourth Jamie Tulloch/Legends book, currently codenamed Project BALTIC. That book is under contract and the pitch I wrote for my editor has got the thumbs up, so I'm starting work on it about a month ahead of when I'd planned to, which I'm hoping will let me get 40-50k drafted this side of Christmas. If I can hit the halfway point before finishing up for the year I'll be very pleased.
I think the outline will take me 2-3 days of fiddling, but I've allowed myself until the end of the week. We'll see how it goes.
TOOLS AND PROCESS: I was going to write about the outlining process here, but it's probably worth a longer post at some point to be honest. Instead I can share a minor revelation I had this morning, while wandering through the woods. I was thinking about how the necessities of publishing and the limited time I have on dayjob days mean that it can sometimes be weeks (or even months) between periods where I'm drafting, as in actively creating new work.
I actually used to have a bit of a complex about this - if I wasn't creating new words, I'd panic a bit and feel like I wasn't truly 'writing'. While this is nonsense, it's also true that if I have long gaps between drafting on new projects, it can be quite hard to get the ball rolling again.
I'm also increasingly working on more than one project at a time, often one or two on a deadline and another one rolling along in the background. And they often get paused during those gaps when I'm doing other non-drafting stuff (edits, line edits, proofs, outlining etc).
So I think I'm going to try aligning my Friday schedule with the rest of the week, so that I have a good 90 minutes every Friday morning to draft something, even if the rest of the week I'm doing edits or proofreading or something. At the moment I theoretically get up a couple of hours later (0730 instead of 0530) but in practice my cats are very well trained to get me up so I'm usually awake anyway. Might as well have a single routine and stick to it. Then I can nip out for a walk and come back to whatever Friday's main effort is (which might be more drafting on the same or a different project, or might be editing, proofing, marketing work etc).
I shall report back on how that goes next week.
LISTENING: I enjoyed the second episode of Jordan Acosta's The Pallid Mask - still being absolutely blown away by the script, performances and production values. Do check it out if you are even halfway eldtrich-inclined.
WATCHING: Finished SLOW HORSES over the weekend but didn't watch much else. But I did enjoy the new Dune 3 trailer. Seems like they're not shying away from 'Paul becomes a brutal autocrat' part of the novels:
READING: More of THE TRIALS OF EMPIRE by Richard Swan (Bookshop, Waterstones, Amazon) over the weekend and it's all gone a bit spooky and weird. And I always rather enjoy fantasy characters from cold countries ending up in fantasy hot countries - very relatable for this easily-overheated Scot.
LINK: I'm intrigued by this interview on the Honest Editor with Laura Palmer and Jessie Sullivan of new publishing company Pellerin Books, which has been founded with an explicit focus on data sharing, transparency and partnership. The infantilisation of authors (lots of little white lies and conflict-avoidant babying) is one of my biggest bugbears with the industry, so I'll be keeping an intrigued eye on this. It really shouldn't be a brave new stance to think that perhaps sharing data with your business suppliers (which is what authors are to publishers, through the least romantic lens we can apply) is good for both authors and publishers.
UP NEXT: Outlining and drafting this week. And also starting to prepare for my appearance at the London St Andrews Book Festival with Charles Cumming, chaired by Nicola Meighan.
This is currenly my last planned event for the year and I'm really, really looking forward to it. Click the links above to get your ticket and I'll see you there!
Time for another cuppa, then I'll set about my day.
Onward!