Daynote - Thu 12 Mar 2026

On the road to recovery now (thank goodness) but I'd likely have avoided a walk this morning in any case, since the woods and fields were swept with rain and wind. Last day of London Book Fair today, hope everyone's doing alright and not suffering too much from lack of sleep. Take some vitamins. Sleep on the train.

ON DECK: A cheeky 1,143 words this morning, finishing off the big action scene and starting another. Still anxiously watching my overall word count and thinking about what I still need to do. I suspect I'll be doing some serious outlining tomorrow to get me through to the end. And I think I'll need to also reverse outline to figure out where I can make cuts, because this thing is definitely going over budget, words-wise. That said, it's starting to look and feel like a real book now, which is always an exciting part of the game.

LISTENING: It's publication day for THE DARK HEART by Neil Lancaster (Bookshop, Waterstones, Amazon) which I read for an event with Neil that didn't go ahead, unfortunately. But this morning I got the next best thing, which was Neil appearing on The Conversation with Nadine Matheson. A great episode and an insight into writing long-running series fiction.

WATCHING: We finished SMALL PROPHETS last night. What a beautiful, remarkable piece of television. Highly, highly recommended.

READING: A chunk more of THE INFINITE STATE by Richard Swan (Bookshop.org, Waterstones, Amazon) before bed last night and it continues to escalate in grimly fascinating ways.

LINK: A discussion in a writing Discord I'm in about attrition rates and stubbornness in the publishing game led me to this excellent blog post (that's nearly a decade old) from Ada Palmer, about her long, long journey to publication. The passages talking about wanting to be published so badly it felt a little overwhelming are extremely relatable.

UP NEXT: It's Writing Friday tomorrow and I'm hoping to really set the table for finishing this book. Which is very exciting. I started the draft in December and I think tomorrow's outlining will bring me to the end proper. I also reckon I've got a reasonable chance of finishing the first draft by the end of March, which is ahead of schedule and would give me a really nice chunk of editing time before the deadline for the finished book. The high of finishing a first draft is often pretty amazing and I'm really looking forward to it.

Onward!