Daynote - Thu 23 Jan

Lovely morning walk this morning, although I was a bit late out of the house because I got absorbed in a scene.

I didn't take the picture above, but it turns out I know the person who did (which is the second time I've found a former colleague on Unsplash by accident). You can find Sarah's excellent freelance design business here.

I am thinking about digging out the point-and-shoot camera I have somewhere in my office, charging it up and taking it out with me of a morning, because let me tell you I am missing the opportunity to photograph some stunning sunrises.

ON DECK: A pretty solid writing session this morning, with 1,636 words. It started pretty slow, because I'd neglected to micro-outline far enough ahead and ran out of scenes to write. I've got the overall treatment-style outline to fall back on, but the specific scenes and their orders don't get locked in until a week or so ahead and occasionally I get through my micro-outlined work faster than anticipated and run out of road.

So I spent the first forty minutes or so of the session getting five or six scenes outlined to the beat level, then jumped in. The power of this micro-outlining approach for me is that I don't feel constrained, but when I start a new scene I don't have that sinking 'what is this scene even meant to do' feeling that leaves me staring at a blinking cursor. I finished a little late and had a rushed walk as a result, but I got a decent word count, so I'm happy.

I also had a fantastic call with Nadine Matheson for her podcast yesterday - it was an absolute joy. I've done enough podcasts now that I'm getting much better at relaxing and just enjoying the discussion and that definitely felt like the case yesterday. I had a great time.

I also had encouraging emails with my agent yesterday - PROJECT SHARD needs a little more work, but it's all eminently doable and we now have a solid submission plan. Going out to editors with my first pure SF novel is really exciting. This will be my third time out on submission and it's the first time that it doesn't feel crushingly bleak as a process (yet), because I'm now a working author with plenty on the go already. It's good to have lots of irons in the fire.

TOOLS AND PROCESS: I started using my Supernote Manta in earnest yesterday, practicing using the markup tools to review a PDF (amazing) and the notebook tools to create an interlinked project file for my next book. It is so cool. The ability to insert additional pages, link things together and create instant tables of contents by circling heading text (all handwritten) is amazing. And being able to quickly sketch things out feels fantastic.

Could I do all these things on an iPad, or even just on some paper? Yes, of course. But for me, the combination of the Digest function for marking up manuscripts, the infinitely expanding notebook and the lack of distracting other apps is absolutely killer. I suspect I will slowly migrate all of my brainstorming, idea generation and personal edit review work into the Supernote over time.

I've still not decided how or when I'll sync it to my other devices. I've got Dropbox sync set up just to move PDFs and other files onto the device, but I'm trying to decide whether to use Supernote's own cloud. I'm generally wary of signing up for yet another cloud service, but Ratta keeps the device remarkably flexible - you can also browse the notes directly via Bluetooth and your web browser, with no cloud account required. I'll experiment with that first, I think.

LISTENING: I loved this fantastic episode of Always Take Notes with Michael Lewis (MONEYBALL, THE BIG SHORT etc). That kind of really long form journalism/profile writing is an absolutely fascinating kind of writing work, I think.

WATCHING: More episodes of THE RIG last night. It continues to be bonkers, but there's a lot going on in the subplots, as well as some really great acting.

READING: More boat book beta reading. I've been really slow on it because I'm doing a lot of crit reading at the moment, but it's a good sign when you're annoyed that you're not getting time to read someone's book, especially when that book is an unpublished beta read. It's really bloody good.

LINK: I found myself nodding along to a lot of things in Emma Newman's recent blog post about rebuilding her online presence and activities away from social media. I binned Twitter a little while ago for similar reasons and, though I'm still enjoying Instagram and Bluesky, I'm on the point of ditching Threads (which is an algorithmic wasteland of Bad Takes in my experience). Bluesky feels like a lot of fun in comparison, mostly due to robust blocking and moderation tools that discourage the kind of viral bullshit that makes social media horrible to use. But I suspect eventually the pressures of capitalism will cause them to start twiddling the enshittification knobs and make it worse.

UP NEXT: I'm picking up the pace on PROJECT SCARLET to get the first draft finished a little earlier than planned, so I'm going to do more micro-outlining and draft, hopefully, about 1,500 words per day. Obviously if I can get more than that I'll be chuffed, but that's roughly what I'm aiming for. So this section of the daynotes may get a little monotonous.