Writing

Progress was somewhat laboured today. I’m planning to go to Edinburgh for the day tomorrow, I think I’ll be out on Sunday, on Monday my car is booked in for an MOT and service in Galashiels (50 minutes’ drive away) from 10am and I am hoping to go from there to Peebles to complete my errands before places close at 4pm (to be on the safe side). My friend Kyla is coming to stay from Thursday until Sunday.

This round of editing is tiring me out. I’m currently on page 50 of almost 250 pages. I’m getting through it far faster than I expected. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad, but I am inclined to think it’s bad. But the more times I go through it from start to finish, the more familiar I become with my story and the easier (in theory) it is to make changes and hopefully make it as good as I can.

I slept overnight in my cabin last night, got up and brushed my teeth outdoors in the fairly ferocious wind, then made myself a coffee in my coffee percolator, which I drank outside, feeling unexpectedly smug. I then worked in the cabin all day and have made good progress. I'm on chapter 20 of 51, though that is no reflection of how much editing I need to do.

I’m now back home in Scotland after a two-week break in London, which mainly consisted of catching up with my mum and 13 friends, which to the Scottish-living version of me amounts to a year’s worth of socialising in a fortnight! I had a really lovely couple of weeks and had considered staying an extra few days, but I felt ready and excited about starting the big edit. Well, I say “big edit” but that’s what I thought version 3 would be. It wasn’t. It ended up being a rewrite.

Today has been an unsettling day (my mum is kind of fine but did have to go to hospital in an ambulance; I live about 400 miles away – she was discharged early evening, fortunately, and I’ll see her early next week). Both before and during all that, I did actually finish version 3. I know I should feel really excited but, unsurprisingly, I feel distracted by other things.

I only wrote one chapter today but it was a key chapter and had to be written from scratch, so no copying and pasting from version 2. I felt quite excited when I finished stenoing and writing it as the end is very much in sight. I have three chapters to write, and I’ll need to rewrite them all, except possibly the final chapter, which anyway is very short. My word count is 96,000, so this version will end up being less than 100,000 words (which will be cut). It was good to fe

Today was almost a reversal of yesterday, whoop!                 I often hear of writers being asked if they’re plotters or pantsers (as in seat of your pants). For quite a long time, I consider myself a plotter, but I was kidding myself. I have plotter intentions but I’m most definitely a pantser by default. Today, however, I spent most of this morning actually plotting the “new” final few chapters and then wrote two of the four of those new chapters

I’ve slightly lost track of how many chapters I wrote today, not because I wrote so many but because I’m amalgamating and changing things quite significantly. In many respects, I’m seeing this as a good thing but the sections I’ve read back haven’t been great. Well, I’m being unfair on myself. I know I’ve said this a few times now, but I had convinced myself that version 3 would be brilliant, greatly improved from versions 1 and 2. I thought it would be mainly copying and pas

If someone told me they spent all day from 7.30am either thinking about starting writing or reading (unrelated) or doing blue sky thinking (AKA attempting to sleep/hide/avoid) or doing chores and didn’t actually start writing until gone 3pm, I’d be appalled at their lack of focus. On the plus side, say that person were me, a productivity burst between 3 and 6 makes up for that … right?

27. Saturday 31 January 2026 I rewrote/copied/edited one chapter today, which I see as a bonus extra as I haven’t factored in working on Saturdays and Sundays. It’s far from being my best chapter but it takes me to chapter 39, which will have to be a complete rewrite and a very short chapter. Chapter 40 is one of a few chapters dedicated to lesson six of six and then there are only a few more “incident room” meet-ups and wrapping-up chapters.                 I know it will be

I think the problem with my sourdough is that it's over-proofed. I think the problem with my novel is that I'm trying to put in too much detail. My bread and writing life seem to be about excess. That was a lame tie-in, but kind of reflects a slightly disappointing day.

Thursdays seem to be my peak performance days. As with last Thursday, I totally overachieved today. I wrote/edited five chapters. It’s amazing how good it feels to have a productive writing day. I wouldn’t have had time or inclination to snack had I not tidied the snack drawer in a break. Big mistake. I wanted to empty a few packets and storage jars, so ate the contents. I then rediscovered Squashies and ate a load of them.

Today, I edited two chapters and wrote a third, a chapter about a party that I’d sort of accidentally forgotten to write in version 2. It felt like a fairly productive day and I think I found a way to write about the party without describing the whole thing. The crime writing lesson before the party included discussion on using one significant event to make whatever point you want to make about, say, a whole day. So I wrote about one thing out of the ordinary that happened to

23. Tuesday 27 January 2026 I eventually got into the swing of things today, but I don’t feel like I worked well. I got myself a bit mixed up because I realised I had some timescale errors within the chapters I wrote on Friday. I’m now on chapter 28 of version 2, which is chapter 26 of this version. That does mean that I’m only two chapters off reaching my target for this week, but I don’t feel like I’ve done that much as a lot of today's editing was just altering copy and pa

Today did not go at all to plan. I reread class 3 with a view to getting back in the zone to then start editing/rewriting the chapter that is later in time connected to class 3. However, that is where my edit ended today. I am not impressed with myself, in the slightest.

My friend Carla and her daughter Imogen are currently on the M6 heading north. The three of us are having a sleepover in the cabin that Carla helped me build. As is often the case when I have a hard finish for some writing, I kind of overachieved today. Well, I say that but for (fictional) class #2 I had to rewrite and change quite a lot, but for class #3, which I was doing today, it was more of an edit. Hurrah. It was good to have a more positive day in terms of feeling I’d

I was at my desk and editing at 07:00 this morning. All was going well for the first twenty or so minutes. Then I had a stomach ache and, trying not to overshare, ended up back and forth to the bathroom for half an hour. So that was annoying. The writing resumed, all fine, then mid-afternoon, I somehow cut my middle finger just under the cuticle. I wrapped some kitchen towel around it, dabbed the blood and resumed stenoing. Then my finger slipped. Strange, I thought. I’d bled

AI instruction: Woman with white, pixie-cut hair and large, translucent green glasses wearing a multicoloured woollen hat and a black coat and black jogging bottoms, walking along a road through a valley in winter (river, trees, grass). She is carrying a white plastic bin bag and litter pincers 19. Wednesday 21 January 2026 I had such good intentions for today. I thought I’d get straight to it, write and edit loads and be finished so I could read and do a few jobs around the

I was expecting to feel bad for not having written every day, but I’m okay with it, and rightly so; I need a break. That said, I have struggled to get back into my writing and editing today, and I certainly don’t think that what I wrote today is my best work. I’ve realised that to attempt the ten chapters I’d like to write this week, seeing as I barely did anything on Saturday and took Sunday and Monday off while I stayed in Edinburgh, I’d need to write two chapters on two da

17. Saturday 17 January 2026 My work-in-progress novel is called Crime Writing for Beginners , which is the name of a six-week course. When one of the six students dies in a perceived accident at home, the remaining five decide not to waste an opportunity to put their investigative skills to the test so treat his death as a murder. The idea is that the reader knows almost as much as them because almost all knowledge they have of the victim is from the unconventional exercises