Daynote - Mon 28 Apr

Today felt like proper spring to me. The temperature has risen a good five degrees on average. The woods are getting very leafy indeed, including the first shoots of nettles and ferns. And I met Poppy the Black Labrador at the beach this morning and had a truly excellent stick-throwing session. Felt very good, especially to stretch the legs and arms after most of yesterday was spent reorganising our garden shed.

ON DECK: More timeline work this morning, plus exporting chunks of the book for my critique partners. I've timelined out to the end of Part 3 of a five part book, so I reckon I'll be done by Wednesday.

TOOLS AND PROCESS: I don't think I've actually written on this blog about how I manage my critique partner's comments - I'm part of a fairly intensive weekly group, so there's a pretty constant flow of comments coming from 3-5 people at any time. It can be a lot to manage (as well as a lot of reading). I'll write soon about how we run our group (it's a full-on model, but one that's proven absolutely game-changing for all of us), but right now I'm just feeding chapters through the group and collecting comments.

Later this week, I'll start editing, beginning with a fairly meaty change that someone suggested and everyone else agreed with. Then onto line edits with the comments for reference. The group is about halfway through the book just now, so while they're reading the second half, I'll go back to the start and do another polish and integration edit, checking everything against the timeline, trying to find about another 3k of cuts and making sure every sentence has earned its place.

LISTENING: One advantage of timelining work is that it's quite manual and mechanical, so I listen to podcasts while I'm doing it. This morning I really enjoyed The Real Writing Process of Mark Stay, and the second episode of Nick Harkaway on the Le Carré Cast.

WATCHING: We got on the ANDOR train this weekend and inhaled the first couple of episodes of season 2. I think I quite like the 'three episodes a week' model. It allows a bit of buzz to build about a show, but means you can have a little mini-binge if you're enjoying it. And ANDOR is structured in three-episode blocks that correspond to years in the main character's life, which I learned by listening to this podcast with the showrunner Tony Gilroy.

READING: I finished my friend's (excellent) cyberpunk novel beta read over the weekend and loved it. Then I read a bit more of INNOCENT GUILT by Remi Kone, which is getting very twisty barely a hundred pages in.

LINK: Also over the weekend I was tagged in this really lovely review for A RELUCTANT SPY by Karen Cole at the Hair Past A Freckle book blog. And then I got to hear it read out loud on local radio! Very cool. Review starts around the 55 minute mark.

UP NEXT: Just two days until I'll be in conversation with Chris Whitaker at Waterstones in Edinburgh. I'm just putting together my questions and still thinking about how good the book was. There's still tickets available, but I'd imagine they'll go quick, so grab one if you'd like to come along.

In the meantime, timelining, critique parner edits and then on to the final polish, probably early next week. Very exciting! Onward!