Daynote - Wed 27 Aug

When I pulled up my CMS (which is the excellent Ghost) this morning to write today's note, I noticed that this will be post #400. Which is quite a large number, especially because when I started doing these near-daily posts, I'd just migrated about 150 posts over from my old website.

I get asked a lot about how I do these and my answer is always the same - habit and templates. Turns out it's also an absolutely invaluable personal record (looking back at my daynotes is how I assemble my monthly newsletter and how I double-check dates on things) and a fair number of people read nearly every post. It's nice to have you all here, on my 400th post, and I hope you'll stick around.

ON DECK: No walking this morning as I was so close to the end of the draft. I finished it right at the end of my session (literally to-the-minute) and got -94 words in total. I'm not done-done quite yet. There's still a couple of things I want to add (though mostly that will be a sentence or two) and I still want to try and trim down the first 100 pages a tiny bit more (likely losing 1-2k words across 30k, if I can). But I'm relieved to have finished the front-to-back edit.

LISTENING: Loved this episode of Scriptnotes talking about how to use connections in the screenwriting trade. A lot of the advice given is equally applicable to publishing, and in fact reminded me a lot of my recent post on answering questions as a published writer.

WATCHING: We didn't fancy anything on telly last night, so instead we watched this Steve Marsh video about visiting the quieter parts of Edinburgh during the busiest month of the year. His itinerary almost precisely matched what I would have done in his place, right down to him walking through our old neighbourhood in town.

READING: I started a wee critique read of a friend's fantasy novel (it's the first 17k, rather than a full novel) and it was excellent. Hopefully I'll finish that off today on my lunch break. It's not a contracted book (yet) but you'd recognise the author's name and I think this book is going to be an absolute banger.

LINK: I really enjoyed this piece by DV Bishop about literary citizenship and supporting other writers. With due caveats about capacity and doing so much you hinder your ability to actually write, I think the literary citizenship aspects of this work are so incredibly important.

UP NEXT: As noted above, just a few wee insertions, a last pass over the opening chapters, then SOLITARY AGENTS is heading back to my editor. Pretty chuffed. No idea what I'm doing next after that. PROJECT DRIFT is still kicking around, plus I have to come up with some pitches for another project, and of course Bloody Scotland and a very busy September are rapidly looming.

Onward!