Daynote - Mon 18 Nov

An absolutely stunning morning, here in Scotland. The reason I haven't been out for my walks for the past couple of weeks (foot injury) is getting better, but I'm still taking it quite easy - I'll try out a short walk at lunch time. Hopefully it won't have clouded over by then. I'd quite like a bit of apricity in my day (the warmth of the winter sun) because this is honestly one of my favourite types of weather - cold but sunny.

ON DECK: An outlining day this morning, doing some micro-outlining for the next 2-3 chapters of PROJECT SCARLET. This is speculative, as it hasn't sold yet, but there's also a chance I may need to expand the outline, so the work is unlikely to go to waste.

I'm going to write a longer post on this at some point, so I won't do a deep dive here, but when I micro-outline I'm planning out the chapter breaks, the POVs, the beats in each chapter/scene and, crucially, the key information I need to both impart and research. This is just bullet points in the notes field for each scene and it's still relatively high level, but the difference this makes when it comes time to actually draft it is immeasurable. It means I never start writing thinking 'why the hell am I writing this scene?' and as a result I can get the first draft done with speed and confidence. Blog post to follow on this soon.

TOOLS: I've spent part of the weekend marvelling at the explosive growth of Bluesky. I've been on there for a while, but I went from 300ish followers to 1200 in the space of a couple of days, mostly thanks to Starter Packs. These were originally intended as customised invites, but as usual they've been repurposed as, essentially, directories of the site and its users. And they are a fantastic way to quickly build an interesting feed. I've also been using Sky Follower Bridge to find and migrate my mutuals from Twitter (that's the real link above, but be careful, the top result for Sky Follower Bridge at the moment is an ad farm spam site).

It is very, very nice to be on a site with robust moderation tools, no algorithm artificially crushing reach and a growing and thriving bookish community. Highly recommended. I'm leaving my Twitter account open for the moment, but I will probably stop posting there at some point. It's increasingly not worth it because of how heavily anything that's not ragebait gets buried.

LISTENING: I've only recently come across the In Writing podcast with Hattie Crisell. I love finding new writing podcasts with big backlogs, because I can queue them all up in a smart playlist in Overcast and binge listen for a few days.

WATCHING: We caught the 6th episode of DAY OF THE JACKAL on Friday. Remarkable television. It's a really fascinating expansion and modernisation of the original story and we're enjoying it immensely.

READING: I read a bunch of THE PEACOCK AND THE SPARROW by I.S. Berry over the weekend. It's wonderful. One of those books that describes a place and a time so vividly it feels like actually being there.

UP NEXT: I'm not going to micro-outline too far ahead - just another couple of chapters. Then I'm in one of those extremely common Indeterminate Waiting Periods that are so common in publishing. I will push forward on PROJECT SHARD while I wait. I might even finish the edits, we'll see.

This week I also have to mail a copy of my book to the winning bidder in the Children In Read annual book auction. A signed and dedicated copy of my book was one of the many amazing lots in the auction, which raised nearly £15,000 for children with cancer. So I'll do my first tentative walk for a couple of weeks up to the village post office to get that sent off.