Lessons from my fictional crime writing class

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 their (crap) teacher, Marie, gives them so I have sort of ended up writing a (crap) crime writing course. I keep thinking I shouldn’t give things away in case someone reading this one day reads the novel, but that feels kind of impossible, but I will maintain a no-spoilers approach to these posts. Anyway, something she tells them is that they should always write at least ten minutes per day to keep themselves in the story and to ensure there is daily progress, even if it’s only a few hundred words.

                Today, I followed Marie’s advice to write at least ten minutes per day, though I’ve overachieved by editing for over ten minutes and writing here for over ten minutes. “All” I did on my novel today was reread one account of what happened to the victim and make a few minor alterations. I know it needs more work at a later date though.

In other news, I have decided to stay a night in Edinburgh tomorrow rather than a day trip. I have a room for less than £50 (the same room is almost three times as expensive on Friday and Saturday nights and I know for a fact it’s significantly more when it isn’t mid-January. I love cheap January and February hotels!). This means, I am likely to break my daily post, which is probably a good thing. I also baked what might be a final sourdough loaf for a while and I made sourdough discard into a pizza for lunch. To mixed reviews. Actually, the dough was pretty good, the toppings let it down, though in my defence it was a fridge raid and stocks are low, including cheese. I had wanted to have a weekend kind of day and I did (a bit of cleaning, sitting around, a short walk, reading and thinking about whether I’ll get through another ten chapters next week, though, ahem, I won’t get back from Edinburgh until Monday afternoon). The photo is of the house (the view from my desk is facing this way and behind the desk is the Velux window to the far right nearest the chimney) and the neighbour’s house and smoke coming out of the chimney from the fire being lit all day.