Daynote - Mon 13 Jan

I had another 'I should really bring a camera' moment on my morning walk today - the moon rising, red and cloud-wreathed, over Fife. This came immediately after seeing a stunning sunrise from the woods, which is always a lovely way to start the day. It's a little warmer today as well, a whole 8°C this morning, though very blustery.

ON DECK: Only just over my soft target for the day (1,045) at 1,095 words. I spent the first half hour of the writing session doing micro-outlines for the next 8-12 short scenes. This is when I read my high-level outline and actually break the action down into scenes, perspectives and timings, then write bullet point summaries in the notes for each Scrivener document in my project. It can take a little while, but it's worth it, because I now have the whole week's worth of writing planned out in enough detail to get started each day.

I don't micro-outline more than a week or two in advance, because I end up hugely overwriting if I do that, plus it often ends up being wasted work if I need to change things that break the detailed outlining. This is my ideal mid-point between having no idea what the hell I'm going to write each day and slogging my way through a hyper-detailed spreadsheet type outline. It works pretty well, especially when combined with another tool - see below.

TOOLS AND PROCESS: When I'm working on a big draft, I use a tool called Pacemaker to plan my rough word count goals. It's a soft goal though, which changes constantly, so I'm not too worried if I don't hit it, or I only just hit it, because Pacemaker will adjust as I write.

Here's my current progress graph:

The dips in the top graph are weekends, while the bottom graph shows cumulative progress over time. As you can see, the little green line (actual progress) is very slightly above the blue line (planned progress). So that's good. And another reason I don't worry too much if a day or two are under target.

However, I'm a recovering hardcore daily targets guy, so I can also switch Pacemaker over to 'adjusting targets' mode which will constantly recalculate my soft target for the day to hit a specific deadline. But I do like to see when the little green line is above the blue line, to be honest.

Another tool you might want to look at is Trackbear, although I haven't used it for a project myself.

LISTENING: I really enjoyed this interview with Adrian Tchaikovsky on the Tiny Bookcase podcast. It's a great podcast and very worth subscribing to, and not just because I was on a couple of episodes back in 2023.

WATCHING: We noticed that classic spy film THE RUSSIA HOUSE was on Amazon Prime (and due to expire soon) so we watched that over the weekend. It's a film I've never seen and a book of Le Carré's that I've never read, so it was a relief to find out it held up pretty well (slow-mo final shots aside). Very tense, classic espionage.

READING: Still working on my beta read of MK Hardy's boat book and still very much enjoying it. This section is going to be a bit dull over the next couple of months because I have a few beta reads I'm doing, which will be taking up most of my leisure reading time.

LINK: My friend and fellow author Anna Stephens posted this amazing link in our writer Discord this morning - the Smithsonian's Open Access collection - 5.1 million images you can use for any purpose. Which is pretty cool! And if you're a writer or blogger who needs cool and interesting images for your posts, very useful indeed.

UP NEXT: Surprise surprise, more work on PROJECT SCARLET. Otherwise it's a quiet, in-the-routine week - writing, getting out for a walk every morning and trying to get another 5,000-7,000 words done. On we go.