Daynote - Fri 14 Feb

Off into town this morning for my first of two lectures at Napier University, on the Creative Writing MA (the next one is next Friday). That has meant a break with the morning routine, but I will make up for it by a lot of walking in town and some writing done around the teaching I'm doing today.

ON DECK: Zero words so far this morning (I told you it was a break with routine), but I'll have a couple of waiting/drinking coffee chunks of time before and after my teaching session in which I hope to get some words down. For me, I think it's very, very important to have a sustainable writing routine. But I also think it's a good idea to occasionally break that routine and try out writing in different contexts, without all of the conscious and unconscious cues and rituals that accompany the day-in-day-out normal process.

Doing this occasionally gives me the reassurance that I haven't become overly reliant on my comfortable office, nice big monitor, quiet early morning vibes and the rest of the things that form part of my usual routine. Because one thing that became quite clear to me last year was that it's very likely, as my career goes on, that interruptions to the routine might become more regular, and deadlines (and my peace of mind gained from writing) won't wait just because I'm on a train or in a hotel or waiting in a cafe somewhere. So, I'm quite deliberately training myself to be able to keep up my routines, even when I don't have that normal daily structure.

TOOLS AND PROCESS: I've had the Supernote now for a couple of weeks and I'm really enjoying it. I haven't yet used it for an edit yet, but I have been taking a bunch of notes for my next project, as well as doing some sketching of maps and concepts I need to get my head around. I do want to set aside some time to shift some key notes across from Obsidian and start using the Supernote as my main idea capture device, but for now I'm content to be working through a few ideas and drawing out maps without getting caught up in my weird hangups about 'wasting' paper/nice notebooks (yes, I know, absurd, but the hesitance is there nonetheless).

LISTENING: Loved this episode of the Page One Podcast with Delilah S. Dawson - what an amazing and wide-ranging career. And very encouraging one to hear for the fast genre writers among us.

WATCHING: The penultimate episode of this season of SAS ROGUE HEROES last night, which had some cracking lines. Looking forward to the last episode over the weekend.

READING: A couple of chapters of Richard Swan’s THE TYRANNY OF FAITH yesterday, and it’s great to be back in the world of Sova, although the immediate sense of creeping dread is somewhat of a counterweight to that feeling.

LINK: I like finding weird and cool resources, especially for blog posts and sparking ideas and such. And the Public Domain Image Archive is exactly that. Over 10,000 images so far, many of them weird and wonderful.

UP NEXT: Today’s teaching and a bit of writing on the way back and forth. Hopefully I’ll get 2k or so. It’d be nice to clear 80k total this week but I’m a fair bit off that just yet. Might do some editing on SHARD this weekend if I get up early enough.

Onward!