Daynote - Mon 9 Dec
Written from the morning train.
The above image is in lieu of my usual morning walk, since I'm up and into town early for a thing. Every time I have to early commute I'm reminded of how little I like early morning commuting.
ON DECK: A short session this morning (due to the commute) but not a bad cut count, ending after about an hour with -176 words cut. And with that I also reached the end of the first part of the book (it's three parts plus an epilogue) and about 35,000 words into the draft. I'm cutting as I go and aiming for a 120k finished draft, so I'm not a third of the way through even the final word count, but it's still a nice milestone to hit.
Plus, due to the aforementioned thing, I may have some bits and pieces of time that I can use this week outside of my normal writing time to make progress on the edit. We'll see - said time will be quite unpredictable.
TOOLS AND PROCESS: I had cause last week as I was setting up Focus to review the websites that I wanted to add to my 'allow' list, which reminded me how great the Onelook Thesaurus is. If you're a writer looking for good lists of alternates, or to brainstorm a bit, I reckon it's the best online thesaurus available.
LISTENING: I had a podcast recording on Sunday, with the brand new writing podcast Unfortunately... which is all about the rejections and travails along the way in a writing career. I had a great time recording and enjoyed the first couple of episodes as part of my prep, which you can find here.
WATCHING: Finally watched DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: HONOUR AMONG THIEVES over the weekend, which was great fun. A well-made, knockabout comedy fantasy film that paid loving tribute to the source material without being too bound by it. Recommended.
READING: I'm in the last 25% or so of JUSTICE OF KINGS and it's great. I expect I'll finish it shortly, given the commuting I'll be doing this week.
LINK: I've enjoyed the work of Cal Newport in the past (DEEP WORK, DIGITAL MINIMALISM etc) so I thought this was a very good round-up post of his key articles and concepts. I wonder what it would look like if I tried to summarise my own body of work in this way?
UP NEXT: Decisions have been made, which is very exciting, but now there's negotiations to be done, so in the meantime I'm still chugging steadily forward on PROJECT SHARD. I expect it will occupy me until the end of the week.