Daynote - Tue 15 Jul

No walk this morning, got up too late and it's been raining off and on, but I made reasonable progress on the new book. The above is a reasonable weather summary - patches of blue and sun, occasional torrential showers. That's July in Scotland for you.

ON DECK: I nearly wrote this morning off. Slept through my alarm again, raining outside, feeling a bit tired and overwhelmed with everything I need to do before I go to Harrogate on Thursday. But I've learned over the years that even 10 minutes is better than zero minutes.

Total zero days do happen, as evidenced last week, and it's not the end of the world. But it can be surprising how much you can get done if you get into it. I started writing about 08:20 this morning and managed to get 709 words done in about 35 minutes. So, I'll call that a win. Past versions of me would have berated myself for not doing my full usual writing time or hitting my word count target, but there's always tomorrow. And you can get surprisingly far just getting in 30 minutes a day.

TOOLS AND PROCESS: I haven't plugged this tool in a while and I have a few new readers, so I'll point you towards the excellent Pacemaker as the tool that I use to roughly plan how long a draft is going to take me. You can adjust nearly every factor (writing at weekends, steady word counts or variable, which day of the week to start on, what you want to track, how often you want to track it, how you want it to be displayed etc) and it does an amazing job of showing progress and flexing to help you with bumps in the productivity road. Highly recommended.

LISTENING: Really loved this episode of The Conversation with Nadine Matheson, interviewing crime writer Clare Mackintosh. Loved her clear-eyed look at the realities of building a writing career, especially when you start on a high.

WATCHING: We started DEPT Q on Netflix last night, after hearing some good buzz about it. Aside from geographical oddities (a character teleported to three different locations in the Old Town, going in opposite directions, before entering the City Chambers, masquerading as the High Court, from the other side of the street than the one she'd arrived from, in the first five minutes) it was a very effective first episode and ended on a very unexpected note.

READING: More THE POWER OF THE DOG last night. Still slightly in awe of Don Winslow's head-hopping powers. When someone pulls off what is generally regarded as a major no-no, it's kind of amazing. He'll often use a bit of physical action (like someone passing a drink) to accomplish the head-hop and it works so well.

LINK: I really enjoyed this piece about the use of language in Elmore Leonard's crime fiction in the New Yorker, even as I rolled my eyes slightly at the 'can you believe this guy used literary techniques in genre fiction' tone of it.

UP NEXT: Tomorrow is a busy one - meeting a friend for breakfast in town, then doing an event in the afternoon involving a lot of talking and walking. Then I need to pack because Harrogate is rapidly approaching. I took way too much stuff with me last year and most of it was too warm, although the weather looks like it's going to be about 10 degrees cooler (and a bit rainier) this year. We'll see.

Onward!