Daynote - Wed 4 Dec

All votes very welcome.

Daynote - Wed 4 Dec

Lovely walk this morning, though not as frosty. A wee reminder too that the Crime Fiction Lover Awards close today at 12. You can see all the shortlists and vote here. If you read and enjoyed A RELUCTANT SPY, please do vote if you can.

ON DECK: Continued with the SHARD edit this morning - I cut about 250 words again, then immediately reversed those cuts by writing a new paragraph in the next chapter, for a net loss of -12. Days like that can be a bit frustrating when you're working towards a target word count, but going backwards in the word count reduction doesn't mean all those little cuts evaporate - those scenes are still faster, cleaner and tighter than they were before. But I'm about 1/6th of the way through the book in chapter count terms, so I'll need to cut a little deeper as I go I think.

TOOLS AND PROCESS: I'm re-recommending Cleanshot X - I used it to make the banner at the top of this page. What a great little app. It's no longer on sale unfortunately, but it's worth the full price regardless.

LISTENING: Back to the ol' reliable Living in the Library playlist this morning.

WATCHING: We started watching Season 2 of SILO last night. The first episode was excellent - an entirely silent hour of Rebecca Ferguson solving engineering problems. I'm always fascinated by watching really capable actors doing the equivalent of tying one hand behind their back and yet still communicating an incredible range of emotion.

READING: Still working on JUSTICE OF KINGS, but I also started HOW TO DO NOTHING by Jenny Odell, which I've heard recommended many times by artists and writers struggling with the balance of distraction and promotion. It's excellent so far.

LINK: I'll never pass by a really good nitpicking post from military historian Bret Devereaux - here he is looking at the problems of sci-fi armour.

UP NEXT: Decisions may have Been Made but have yet to make their way to me, so my plans remain unchanged - edit as much of SHARD as I can in the indeterminate time available to me. We'll see how long that ends up being.