Daynote - Mon 28 Oct

While the above photo is not from my actual morning walk (because I don't take my phone with me deliberately and I keep forgetting to take my camera) it is pretty much spot-on vibes-wise. It was a lovely, very autumnal Monday walk today. Three deer frozen in a field, watching me pass, five excitable dogs at the beach, chats exchanged with three neighbours and a generally life-affirming start to the day. And to think I nearly didn't go because it looked a bit damp.

Go on the walk. You won't regret it.

ON DECK: The reason I nearly skipped my walk this morning was because I didn't have a very productive writing session, so I was going to extend it for another hour. But sometimes you just have to do what you can. My intention for this week was to work on Ridealong and get it done and out on submission, but I opened the file this morning and stared at it for a bit, then realised I just wasn't feeling it.

I think it's because I have a bunch of planning floating about in my head for PROJECT SHARD and PROJECT CRIMSON, and when it's floating in my head it crowds everything else out. I'm waiting on A Decision from a third party, which has a tendency to freeze me in place if I'm not careful, so I decided to do the organisation and planning I need to do. That involved reviewing two sets of notes (one from a crit partner and one from my agent) for PROJECT SHARD and assembling an edit plan.

LISTENING: Working to Episode 420 of the Hypnagogue Podcast this morning.

WATCHING: We watched INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY yesterday (it was my birthday and my mum was visiting, and we fancied something a bit daft). It was pretty good! It certainly felt more like an old-school Indiana Jones movie than the last one. The cameos by old characters were great and the WILD sequence in the last 30 minutes had me hooting.

READING: More DEATH IN THE ARCTIC last night and I'm starting to get really quite tense waiting for someone to get murdered.

UP NEXT: Didn't quite finish it the edit plan for SHARD, but I should get it squared away later today/early tomorrow. Then I will do a micro-outline (blog post coming soon on that, the newest element of my writing process) on the next 3-5 chapters of SCARLET, so that should A Decision come back sooner than I expect, I'm not caught flat-footed and I can jump straight into it. Once the edit plan for SHARD and the micro-outline for SCARLET are both done, I can start working on SHARD edits until either they're done or A Decision is made.

I'm realising that a skill I will need to get better at is filling up the many (many) indeterminate waiting periods that publishing creates with forward motion and work. In the past I've been reluctant to start on things in case other things happen, with the result that I just sort of faff about in waiting mode and don't get either thing done, then end up with a logjam of work later. I'm determined to avoid that in 2025.