Daynote - Thu 23 Apr 2026

Got up a little late again, so no walk, but that's okay, because I had an absolute tonne of stuff to get on with, writing-wise.

ON DECK: This morning I started in earnest on the edit for Project VAULT, although it was mostly laying groundwork rather than actually editing words. The first big job was stripping out a whole POV. And it showed me how right the instinct to do that was - I need to cut at least 13,000 - 15,000 words from the total project word count, and guess how long this POV was, once I added together all the scenes?

That's right, 13,527 words. It's kind of hilarious how precisely surplus this word count is. Of course it won't be a clean chop - there's a few scenes and bits of dialogue I'll need to snip out and re-attribute/place in another character POV, because they're plot relevant, but my instinct as I was drafting that this narrative thread wasn't really working turns out to be precisely correct.

TOOLS AND PROCESS: The other thing I got started on this morning was timelining - I use Aeon Timeline to import all the scenes from my Scrivener project and lay them out on a timeline so I can tell if I've accidentally had things happen in the wrong order, or simultaneously when that's impossible and so on.

It's phenomenally useful during my own editing and later on in the process when I'm working with a copyeditor, who is looking out for continuity errors as part of their job. And it helps me do the kind of specific research I need to make the timelines work, like having realistic travel times between locations. It's very, very satisfying prep work.

LISTENING: An excellent episode of Drafting Notes on what to expect on that first call with an agent. These little bite-sized episodes are covering a huge range of publishing and writing topics and they're all worth your time.

WATCHING: A bite more RESIDENT ALIEN last night - this episode definitely leaned towards the goofier end of the spectrum. Still a lot of fun though.

READING: Steadily reading CHILDREN OF STRIFE by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Bookshop, Waterstones, Amazon) and having a great time, though it's still in that coalescing period where I'm waiting to see how the different storylines and points of view will begin to intersect.

KIT: Speaking of Adrian Tchaikovsky, he was asking on Bluesky yesterday about apps or services that allow you to create a 'podcast' RSS feed with audio files and I recommended the excellent HuffDuffer - I've used it for years when I find a little chunk of audio (lectures, one-off dramas etc) that isn't part of a podcast feed - you can 'huffduff' the audio file link and it will show up as a podcast episode in a feed your account generates. A very useful tool.

LINK: I was absolutely over the moon for my friend and critique partner Nick Binge (aka Brucker, in this instance) when he finally got to talk yesterday about the extremely exciting adaptation in the works for his novel WHITE SMOKE - Benedict Cumberbatch and A24! What a combo. My favourite take on it was this AV Club article - 'Fine, we'll watch Benedict Cumberbatch rob the Vatican during a papal conclave'.

UP NEXT: I'm off to see THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD tonight at the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh. I was a little sad not to catch the 'in the round' staging in London, but I'm really, really looking forward to seeing it tonight.

Then, tomorrow, I'm going to be combining an editing session in the morning with a trip back into Edinburgh to meet a friend I've not seen for ages, and my regular gaming group later in the day. Looking forward to both.

Onward!