Daynote - Wed 30 Oct

Lovely walk this morning amid the leaves and the mud. It is very definitely nearly winter. And tonight we will carve some pumpkins for the doorstep so that the local kids can come and get some sweets. Love a bit of Halloween.

ON DECK: 220 words in edits this morning on PROJECT SHARD, and I've knocked off everything on my list classified as 'small'. That's things which are usually a single line or paragraph fix in one scene. I tend to do these first because it gets them out of the way and they are rarely made irrelevant by other edits later in the process. Feels good to check a bunch of things off and gives me some momentum. And I had a really good podcast interview last night (more in the newsletter on that).

LISTENING: Back to the Hypnagogue Podcast this morning, finishing off episode 420.

WATCHING: We got caught up with BAKE OFF last night. We also finished off Season Five of WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS. Brilliant stuff.

READING: A couple more chapters of DEATH IN THE ARCTIC last night. Tension unbearable.

UP NEXT: Next up is my 'medium' fixes on PROJECT SHARD, where I'm making changes in three or four places that I've clearly identified already. Then the 'large' changes after that, which involve making changes right across the manuscript. I used to try and identify all the points where I wanted to make a change in advance, but that means I end up edit planning for a week or more, and a bunch of the planned changes on Problem A become irrelevant as I make cuts to fix Problem B and C. So now I note down the problem, classify it 'large' and then find all the instances when I pick up the task. It works a bit better I think.

Also looking forward to an exciting call on Friday. Not sure what will come of that, but it's good to be moving forward with stuff.

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