Keeping a fire lit, more sourdough & litter-picking. And a bit of rewriting.

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 house. On a more positive note, knowing what I’m like, I think that by the end of today (I finished what I wanted to do shortly after 17:30, which is a few hours earlier than yesterday) I was back in the zone and the last third of the chapter seemed to flow easier. This gives me high hopes for tomorrow's progress.

                My main distractions today were sourdough (I know, I know, I said loaf five last week would be the last one for a while, but my friend Carla is hopefully visiting on Friday night for the weekend and she bought me the proving basket that I use, so I felt I should dazzle her with a loaf of sourdough) and the multifuel burner (I succeeded in doing what I set out to do, which was keeping it minimally lit overnight and during the day to keep downstairs just about warm, ready to be heated more this evening). I managed not to get diverted by too much else today, I just couldn’t get into it about half-three.

                I only rewrote two chapters today, but it takes me to the end of the previous version's chapter 16 because I consolidated a couple of chapters. As I’m going by the initial fifty chapters, I now “only” have four chapters to write today and tomorrow. It seems possible, though on the assumption that productivity levels match my surge this afternoon.

In other news, I had a walk and finally remembered to take mucky gloves, a litter grabber and a bin bag; I’ve been meaning to collect rubbish that people chuck out their vehicles for the past month or so. I will never understand the thoughtlessness of people who throw stuff out their vehicles. They don’t care or think about the fact no one is going to pick it up, that it looks horrid lying in grass in an area that is otherwise largely unspoilt and that it’s all round bad for the natural world. I filled an entire, large bin bag and an additional, large cardboard pizza box and discarded plastic tubs of dip that I chucked straight in the recycling bin because they’d been thrown out at the bottom of our drive. On my walk, however, I did also talk to myself about how to lay out a chapter about a party. I don’t know that I’ve done the best job I could do of the party (I’ve used multiple voices in different contexts) but I was struggling to write about people’s interactions at a party and I needed to incorporate quite a few points as it’s a chapter that provides the crime writers with insights into two of the characters in particular. I find it difficult presenting events and speech without an abundance of “and then ... he said ... she said ...” kind of sentences.

                Tomorrow, I’m going to reread chapters 17 to 20, which cover two days subsequent to the character’s death. I’d love to do all four tomorrow but I’m going to stick with my target of two as that seems more realistic in light of recent progress. I also note that I’ve written “rewrite” on the printout for a few sections and there seem to be quite a few errors that need sorting. That said, today’s chapters were also rewrites.