Daynote - Fri 1 Nov
A new month begins.
An excellently spooky Halloween last night - kids started showing up about 6pm once we'd put out the decorations above and they kept coming until past 8pm. Meanwhile we watched a thematically appropriate movie (see below) and snuck a couple of chocolate bars ourselves. All-in-all an excellent evening.
ON DECK: Some really big cuts this morning to PROJECT SHARD. I need to get about 20k words out of the draft in total, but I'll also be adding stuff, so it's probably more like 25k at least, maybe up to 30k. Fortunately I found a big early cut - the novel is naturally divided into episodic chunks in the first half and I found one I could excise pretty cleanly by moving the specific character development points and plot-relevant information to other scenes. So that got me 7,816 words in one fell swoop. I suspect the remaining 22k words I might need to cut will be a bit harder than that. But on we go.
Exciting call today, after which the immediate future should be a little clearer.
LISTENING: Enjoyed the latest episode of Page One, which follows Harry Fisher's journey from self-publishing to indie press and back to self-publishing. I think it's really fascinating seeing how different writers navigate these kinds of decisions.
WATCHING: Our spooky movie of choice was YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, which my wife can pretty much quote word-for-word. Still funny, even on multiple repeat viewings.
READING: A tiny sliver of DEATH IN THE ARCTIC last night, but with all the Halloween tomfoolery I didn't read much.
UP NEXT: As noted, I have a call today that should clarify my direction for the remainder of the year. So I don't actually know what I'll be working on next week. Probably not SHARD? We'll see.