Daynote - Wed 19 Aug

I forgot to take a picture this morning, so the above is actually one I took at Fringe By The Sea a couple of weeks ago. But it's representative of the overall vibe of the woods this morning, shall we say. Lovely and cool today, especially in the shade of the trees.

ON DECK: A very creditable 16 pages edited, plus my overall task list done and I've even checked some things off as I start working through things. It's going well - I bounced out of my office in a palpably good mood this morning.

TOOLS AND PROCESS: I am very curious about my Writing Friday this week - this is the first time since I went part-time at my day job that I've had a day a week available when a novel edit has come in. Over the past few years when I was working on a big edit, I often ended up working in the evenings and at weekends (or extending my morning writing and skipping my walks) in order to meet deadlines, since I'm usually working to 3-4 week turnarounds.

However, this time, I've got my usual deadline but a full day a week more to work on it. The extra day a week has had a notable effect on my drafting speed (it's month 8 in the year and I'm already at 80% of last year's total word count, for example) but I do have a practical daily cap on how many raw words I can write, most weeks - I hit diminishing returns somewhere between 4,000 and 6,000 words. Whereas editing I can do for hours and hours, so hopefully I'll be able to manage this deadline in comfort, with the extra day a week to work on it. I shall report back next week.

LISTENING: I greatly enjoyed this SFFAddicts interview with Suyi Davies Okungbowa on his multi-strand career, particularly the IP and tv/film work he's done alongside his novels. Fascinating stuff.

WATCHING: More of SILO last night, and it does actually feel like this season is properly building up to something.

READING: I read a bit of CRY PILOT by Joel Dane - (Bookshop, Waterstones, Amazon) last night, which continues to be excellent. And I also dove into LONDON STATION by David McCloskey (Bookshop, Waterstones, Amazon) which I was lucky enough to get a proof of from Swift Press. It's fantastic, and I can see why Tim Shipman rated it so highly.

LINK: A depressingly accurate summary of the state of 'AI' mania in tech. Reading this made me feel a little less insane. H/t to Kameron Hurley for the link.

UP NEXT: More editing! And after that, a bit more editing! No events this week, or next, which is quite nice to be honest. But plenty of edits to do.

Onward!