Daynote - Wed 19 Feb

Bit of a random image at the top of today's post, because my five year old Dell monitor started randomly ghosting images this morning, so I'm running an 'LCD conditioning' cycle on it, which is cycling through a half dozen colours like a very slow disco light.

I did get out for a nice walk this morning, most of which I spent nattering into my voice recorder about how exciting yesterday was. I got three pieces of very good news yesterday, two of them related to my creative work, which was quite the shot in the arm during this cold, grey February. I can't talk about any of them right now, but suffice to say things are proceeding and I am very, very happy about it.

ON DECK: That excitement gave me a real boost this morning, and I got through 2,194 words in a tight 90 minutes, which is always nice. When I get larger word counts, it's quite often because I've gone slightly over my routine writing time, usually because I've crawled through the first thousand or so, mildly panicked and then written faster as I ran out of time in the session, often going 15 or 30 minutes over.

But today, by contrast, was just a good, steady accumulation of words over the full writing time, landing on an excellent number. Very pleased.

TOOLS AND PROCESS: I'm getting ready to do my first readthrough with the Supernote Manta once I finish this draft of PROJECT SCARLET. One of the reasons I got it was because of the Digest feature, which, crucially, works with both PDFs and ePub files. So I can get my book on the Supernote as a readable ePub, select areas of text, then write a full page of handwritten notes for each selection, then export that as basically a complete, annotated change list.

I really don't like editing with pen or pencil on paper, because to me it feels like doing the work twice, but what I do like is the ability to generate a todo list and then work through it, with searchable text from the manuscript so I can find each location. I've done a version of this for ages with a regular e-Reader, but the painful part was making comments on the text using an on-screen e-ink keyboard, meaning I resorted to codes (like CHK for 'check' and 'CONT' for continuity) that were a bit quicker to type. This way I can just write stuff out, so I hope it'll be much faster and more effective.

LISTENING: I enjoyed this episode of Always Take Notes with Australian novelist Tim Winton so much that I immediately bought his latest book, JUICE.

WATCHING: We started watching a show on the BBC last night called WRECK, which is a murder mystery/horror set in the 'backstage' crew areas of a cruise ship. Excellent stuff so far.

READING: More of Richard Swan's THE TYRANNY OF FAITH and I'm having an absolute heap of fun. I especially admire how good Richard is at writing characters with genuine flaws who get things wrong and are sometimes horrible to each other, but who you still want to root for. Plus there's a Very Good Boy dog in it called Heinrich.

LINK: Loved this episode of Drafting Notes from the Page One lads about their most influential novels, counting from 5 to 1. The previous episode was great too.

UP NEXT: Trying not to vibrate out of my skin with excitement at the various Things which are Afoot, while also cruising towards the 90,000 word mark on PROJECT SCARLET. And this Friday, I'll be back at Napier University again, this time to talk about writing communities, critique groups and more. Can't wait!

Onward!