Daynote - Wed 20 Nov
Choo choo, off I go again.
Another sunny, cold, clear morning in Scotland. No snow here still. But I'm off down south tonight on the sleeper (hence the pic, though the sleeper doesn't look anything like that) so I may well see some snow on the way.
ON DECK: More editing this morning, though it's slow going. A minimalist 91 words in aggregate. When I give these aggregate numbers, it's usually because I'm writing a bunch and cutting a bunch. This morning though I was trying to work out all the places in my draft that I needed to add something so I could make a list and tick them off, and that took ages. Plus, for Reasons I needed to work out exactly how much a trillion is. Turns out it has two definitions - the Anglo world uses it to mean 'a million million' and the rest of the world, pretty much, to mean 10 to the power of 18, which is a million times greater. So that was a fun diversion.
TOOLS: New phone arrived a day early, which was a terrific bonus as it meant I could get it all set up before I headed down south. The battery life is fantastic, which is brilliant. Size-wise it's nearly identical to my old phone, so it definitely doesn't feel different in the way going from the 5S to the 11 did. But everything is a lot snappier. I'm currently very, very paranoid about dropping it, as I don't have a case on it and I'm a serial phone dropper.
I'm also still playing around with Forever Notes, though I haven't quite taken the plunge of migrating all my scattered notes from a half dozen other places into the Notes app. That feels like a multi-day project, or something to do while watching telly. But that simplification does feel like it may well be worth it.
LISTENING: Really enjoyed this episode of the 'Behind The Lines' podcast about the 'age of bilateralism'.
WATCHING: Bit of BAKE OFF last night, it's getting pretty tense. Then more WOLF HALL. More people standing around talking in period costumes that is nonetheless some of the most compelling telly I've watched this year. Even when I've got a new phone to fiddle with.
READING: Because of said telly watching, we went to bed late, so no progress made yesterday. Hopefully I'll do some reading on the way down to London tonight. There's usually an hour or two of hanging around in lounges due to the way my train connections work.
UP NEXT: Tomorrow night I'm going to see Lorraine Wilson and Claire North in conversation at Waterstones Islington, as I'll be kicking around central London waiting for my sleeper back to Scotland. I'm really looking forward to it. Lorraine is a friend and I read her book WE ARE ALL GHOSTS IN THE FOREST before it sold to Solaris. And I loved NOTES FROM THE BURNING AGE by Claire North. I think it's going to be a fantastic conversation.
The rest of the week should, hopefully, give me some progress on SHARD edits. But any week with travel in it I consider writing progress to be a bonus rather than a baseline. Off we go!