Daynote - Tue 2 Sep

I did over 24,000 steps, according to my watch, over the several hours of dog walking I did at Greyhound Rescue Fife yesterday. It was a really lovely volunteering day spent with a lot of beautiful, friendly dogs and I had a great time. But I decided I couldn't really be arsed going for a walk this morning as a result, so I had a nice lie-in instead.

ON DECK: A cheeky 350 words this morning and another pitch mostly nailed. So that's four now squared away. I'm enjoying writing these pitches, as each one is a potential future book. The main thing for me is that when I finish a pitch and read it back, I want to feel a ✨ tingle ✨ at the back of my head about where the book could go, key scenes I'm looking forward to writing and how it might allow me to develop characters and develop the longer term arc of the books.

If I don't feel that tingle, it goes in the junk drawer of duff pitches. I might pull a duff pitch out again in the future and rework it, but there's no reason to persevere with one that's not quite working - it's nearly always better for me to just try again. Although sometimes (like this morning), running the pitch by another writer for a quick brainstorm can turn a so-so pitch into a banger.

LISTENING: An absolutely fascinating episode of Always Take Notes with Anthony Cheetham, an éminence grise of the British publishing world. I'm a massive sucker for stories of the pre-conglomerate world of publishing and this episode is packed with them.

WATCHING: Two more episodes of KING & CONQUEROR. It's no WOLF HALL, that's for sure, but it's a lot of fun. Backstabbing and betrayals galore.

READING: More of TIME WARPED on the train yesterday and when I got home. Loving it.

LINK: A great article about how foreign rights work from The Honest Editor.

UP NEXT: I'm going to spend one more day going back over all four pitches and cleaning them up/polishing them a bit, then it'll be back to DRIFT, which I will continue working on until Other Things come up. Publishing is like that sometimes - there's a sort of luminous mist surrounding you, out of which sudden, time-sensitive tasks occasionally loom and must be dealt with before you can go back to sawing the wood of the current draft. I have at least three Things I May Have To Do Quickly circling at the moment, but for the meantime I'll crack on with DRIFT.

Onward!