David Goodman's Blog

There's a certain brightness to the green in the woods right now that's my favourite thing. Later in the year, in the heat of summer, the woods can get a little dusty and, while still very green, feel very dense. But right now, everything is verdant and new and crisp and it's lovely.

I've also recently discovered the Merlin app (yeah, I know, me and everyone else) and been really enjoying finally knowing what the names of the birds singing around me. It highlights each bird as it sings, which ma...

Good morning! Into town today for a day in the office, lunch with a mate I've not seen in years, a family visit and, at some point, grabbing some books for a chairing gig later in the year. Busy busy. No walk in the woods as a result, but I'll be getting the steps in traversing Edinburgh, that's for sure.

ON DECK: A cheeky 394 words in aggregate as I do my final polish pass on the short story, which is currently going by the title of SKILL BASE. It's coming out quite nicely, I think. I've got abo...

Good morning! A glorious start to the week, with actual genuine warmth in the sun. If you look carefully in the picture above, you'll see the herd of deer I spotted out in the fields this morning, enjoying the sun on their backs.

ON DECK: This morning I was working on my short story, with a grand total of 14 words added in edits. As always, with editing, I probably wrote something like 200-300 words and cut about the same, so it netted out to very little. And most of these were line edits from my...

I'm having a peripatetic day today, hopping on a train into Edinburgh to do some gentle editing in coffee shops, meet a couple of pals I've not seen in a long time for a late lunch, then my regular gaming group tonight.

ON DECK: I'm still timelining at the moment (using Aeon Timeline), which is essentially data entry, but it's also really important not to skip it, even as I'm champing at the bit to get started on my edit. When I'm down in a chapter, editing at the line level, it's really hard to...

Got up a little late again, so no walk, but that's okay, because I had an absolute tonne of stuff to get on with, writing-wise.

ON DECK: This morning I started in earnest on the edit for Project VAULT, although it was mostly laying groundwork rather than actually editing words. The first big job was stripping out a whole POV. And it showed me how right the instinct to do that was - I need to cut at least 13,000 - 15,000 words from the total project word count, and guess how long this POV was, onc...

I missed my walk this morning, got up a little late and I decided to lock in on the edit for my short story. It's quite nice to have a little more time to work through a full edit in one go.

ON DECK: Roughly 500 words cut from the short story (not counting the 1,500 words of scenes I cut entirely) and it's in pretty good shape, I think? My natural working length for short fiction is the novelette (technically 7,500 to 17,500 in award categories) and this is, technically, in that bracket. But whe...

Another nice walk this morning, though a bit greyer and cooler than yesterday. The woods are leafing out beautifully though - it won't be long before everything will be bursting with greenery.

I had a few folks sign up to my newsletter yesterday, after I said I'd no longer be posting every single daynote on social media. While that was very nice, I don't send my daynotes out via newsletter. That might change in the future, if I upgrade my newsletter software so I can segment and send daynotes to ...

I take photos of this particular curve in the path quite often, because the light in that corner of the woods is nearly always beautiful. Especially on fine spring days like this.

A small PSA - I've decided I'm not going to post my daynotes on social media (Bluesky, Instagram) after today - if you enjoy them, you can still find them on my website. You can even use RSS to have them delivered right to you!

Why? I have a very strong desire to compartmentalise a bit more and spend less time looking a...

My office at home doesn't look like this, but after a week and a half of working on laptops, at kitchen tables and on couches and on hotdesks, in trains and cafes, my home setup feels like this. It's a very, very nice feeling to a) be at home with a comfortable office chair and two large monitors and b) have a Writing Day ahead of me.

No walk yet today (I spent all day in town yesterday so I'm taking the morning off walking) but I'll get out for a run later I think. I had a lovely evening at Edin...

And back into town today, though no dogs involved. I'm working at the day job office, then this evening I'm heading over to Edinburgh Sparks to do a reading and a Q&A. I'm really looking forward to it!

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ON DECK: A nice 1,123 words on VAULT this morning, though again nothing on the short story (I had to run for the train). However I've got an hour or so between finishing work and heading to the ...