Daynote - Thu 3 Sep
Late nights and early mornings.
I do enjoy a picture of a typewriter. I was asked to step in last-minute for a Narrative Damage scenario last night, so I had a later night than anticipated and thus a lie-in this morning. Hence typewriters, instead of trees. But I'll get out for a wee walk tomorrow, hopefully.
ON DECK: A solid 565 words on the treatment I'm working on this morning and I'm into the meat of it, the actual plotty/outliney/synopsis-y bit, which is where the rubber meets the road, mentally speaking, as I try to work out plot arcs, character development, peaks and troughs in action, all that fun stuff. This is a new kind of writing for me, sort of, though I basically write things in this format for my novels too. But this isn't for a novel 👀.
LISTENING: I enjoyed more of the Serving Books series on the Too Much Social podcast, including this episode with Phoebe Morgan (who also writes the excellent Honest Editor Substack that I link to all the time). A very good overview of the role of and working relationship with an in-house editor.
WATCHING: Didn't watch anything last night, because I was recording a Narrative Damage episode. But I did enjoy this interview with fellow thriller author Jack Carr on treating writing as a profession:
(Slightly disagree with him in that writing can be a hobby if you want it to be, but if you're going to pursue getting paid for it, you do need to do that with intention and deliberate practice).
READING: A tiny bit of CRY PILOT by Joel Dane - (Bookshop, Waterstones, Amazon) last night, but not much, because it was very late.
LINK: There was a bit of drama yesterday about someone at Worldcon (the biggest SF convention each year, which moves around the globe and was in Glasgow in 2024) doing very annoying things. This piece in response from Micaiah Johnson asking Is There a Wrong Way to Chase Your Dreams? is an excellent and ultimately quite heartwarming look at the SF genre and the art of building a career within it. Having witnessed someone doing something very similar in Glasgow in 2024, I couldn't agree more.
UP NEXT: I reckon tomorrow I'll finish this treatment doc and, hopefully, make a bit of progress on the actual creative sample. I don't expect to finish it, but I do want to get enough under my belt on it that I can continue the momentum. Next week I'm going to work on a completely different book pitch as well as some blurby/copy type stuff. I'm also continuing to do some stuff on the Secret Project. Then it's back to DRIFT.
Onward!