Daynote - Fri 21 Mar
Edits done, week completed.
A bit of a lie-in this morning (as I was up late fiddling with Canva), but then an excellent writing session.
ON DECK: I finished my planned edits on PROJECT SHARD, wrote up an email to my agent with a list of changes and sent it off. Only 201 words, because I was mostly fiddling with titles and timestamps and little slivers of dialogue. But the aggregate effect is one I'm quite pleased with.
Also had a nice call yesterday with some good news and progress reports that made me very happy.
TOOLS AND PROCESS: Sometimes when I have a lot of fiddly stuff to do like this, I will listen to podcasts while I work. Because, when you think about it, books are, like, really long? Giant documents with tens of thousands of words and page numbers and formatting and all sorts. And sometimes the 'editing' that I'm doing is actually kind of laborious and mechanical. Today was one of those days. And if I need to write some new words, I just pause the podcast, do the new bit, then put it back on again.
I think it's good to remember that writing isn't all unbound inspiration and montages of words flowing from your fingertips. Sometimes it's about mechanically Cmd - F'ing your way through a five hundred page manuscript to find every instance of a word and making sure you haven't contradicted yourself in three different ways.
LISTENING: One of my listens this morning was the latest episode of Print Run, talking about developments among indie publishers in the US who are banding together into co-operatives to access the advantages of scaled printing and shipping costs. More of this kind of thing, please - consolidation of the 'boring parts' between independent businesses to lower their logistics risk and costs and give them more latitude to try new things on the editorial side.
WATCHING: More GLADIATORS yesterday. Loved it.
READING: More PROJECT SCARLET last night. I'm about a third of the way through it and have reached my first draft prose and boy howdy can I tell. It's not bad but wow I repeat myself a lot. Still, lots of easy cuts.
LINK: I enjoyed this piece m'friend and colleague Nick Binge wrote for The Fantasy Hive about his new novel, DISSOLUTION.
UP NEXT: That's PROJECT SHARD away to my agent, so it's back to PROJECT SCARLET from Monday onwards, and into the first round edit. That is likely to carry me well into May, so apologies for how dull these updates are about to get. But first, the weekend! Onward!