Daynote - Tue 1 Apr

The new month has come in with a burst of warm air and blue skies here in Scotland. Had a really lovely walk this morning, including seeing a hare in the field that was so large I thought for a moment it was a deer. Feels auspicious for the season.

ON DECK: Good editing this morning, though I was working on a sequence of short scenes in the first big action set-piece of the novel, which meant it was already quite lean, word-count wise. So I got -667 words cut, which I'm happy with, plus I reached the end of Part 2 of the book and I got the novel draft as a whole under 120k, which is my first milestone for this edit.

LISTENING: I enjoyed my friend Nick Binge's appearance on the Write and Wrong Podcast - he's done the rounds of basically every writing podcast I listen to over the last few weeks, and you think I'd get bored of his voice (especially since we speak weekly in our critique group), but every podcast has a slightly different format and question style, so it's been really interesting hearing him talk about the new book DISSOLUTION from slightly different angles.

WATCHING: We started THE STUDIO on Apple TV last night and it's excellent. Chaotic, hilarious and very well made. The second episode (about a hapless TV exec constantly interrupting a key 'one shot' against the failing light) is incredible, because it is, itself, a one-shot. Highly recommended.

READING: More GOGMAGOG yesterday, as well as continuing to read PROJECT SCARLET.

LINK: Following on from yesterday's post about making your smartphone dumb, I loved this essay, also by Casey Johnston, about coming back to the real world from social media (specifically in the world of strength training, but the lesson applies universally I think).

UP NEXT: More work on PROJECT SCARLET, and I'm hoping for some good emails this week. But you can never predict when the good emails will arrive, so it's best to just crack on with the work. Onward!