Daynote - Tue 27 Jan

I wavered about going out for a walk this morning, as it was pretty blustery and it didn't look like it was raining. Turned out it was that kind of fine, rain-driven drizzle that makes people mutter as they walk. Almost had the beach to myself this morning as a result, just one or two lonely dogwalkers in the distance. Dreich, in a word.

ON DECK: I got a decent 1,139 words this morning, on another new scene. I'm well over the 30k mark now and I've also passed 20k written for January, which is nice with a few days left in hand for the month.

TOOLS AND PROCESS: I don't write to hard word targets and I haven't for some time, but I do track my word counts, both on Pacemaker and in a separate spreadsheet. Pacemaker is how I track what I need to do for any given project, whereas my spreadsheet is the overall weekly/monthly/yearly record of output (and what I use as the basis for my numbers posts).

Part of my spreadsheet is my soft targets, which are 5k a week (when drafting) and roughly 20k a month overall. Obviously I'm not drafting for 52 weeks a year, so it's unlikely I'll hit the 240,000 words that would be produced at that rate if I did work constantly, at least with a steady 20k-a-month production rate. In practice, I have months where I produce zero new words (because I'm editing, or on holiday) and months where I produce 40-50k because I'm getting towards the end of a book and have a bunch of big word count days in a row. But it averages out very, very consistently. And it's nice when the cells turn green in my spreadsheet to indicate a weekly or monthly soft target has been hit.

LISTENING: I greatly enjoyed this episode of the Better Offline podcast with Matt Rosoff of The Register, talking about what it was like working during the dotcom bubble. I started my career in the smoking rubble of that crash, when it all seemed so obvious in hindsight, but this episode has some cracking startup stories.

WATCHING: Latest episode of THE NIGHT MANAGER last night, which I enjoyed, though a couple of incidents deeply strained credulity. Tom Hiddleston continues to be very growly.

READING: More of PAGANS by James Alistair Henry (Bookshop, Amazon) - I'm really enjoying it on two levels, because it's both a very effectively written crime novel AND a fascinating alternate history/present with some really clever worldbuilding.

KIT: It occurred to me as I was walking in the pissing rain this morning that I've never talked about my excellent gloves.

I've been using these black Mechanix work gloves for the better part of a decade. They're the best gloves I've ever owned. Keep my hands warm even when damp, close-fitting with really great dexterity and the elastane material they're made from works with phone screens. The one thing they're definitely not is heat/fireproof, which I discovered when I picked up a hot grill that I thought was cold. But for keeping hands warm when out walking or running, they can't be beat in my opinion. Really affordable too, at £22 a pair.

LINK: An absolutely fascinating interview with Emma Knight, book publicist, over at The Honest Editor.

UP NEXT: I've got a podcast interview scheduled in later this week, then I need to pack my bags for Manchester. Really looking forward to both Stockport Noir and meeting up with my brother (who lives down there) and a bunch of writer friends who are also in the vicinity. After an exceptionally dreich and largely event-free January, it'll be a nice capper to the month.

Onward!