Every Day Is Like Cyber Monday (no deals are contained herein)

Inside Ed’s Head 2023-11-27

#Music

You’re guessing it’s Every Day Is Like Sunday by Morrissey, aren’t you? It’s not. It’s this:

One of those songs that lists the days of the week, but this does it in a brilliant way. I’m seeing them in a few weeks. Actually, might be next.

#Last Week

Okay, so I got stuck right into Marshall 5’s outline and got to halfway. I aim for 70 chapters with these books, which is quite long. I tend to average 1,500 words per chapter, so that’ll be roughly 105,000. Most of my others are about 80-90k, but that might be one of the reasons the Marshall books have been doing so well.

(On a flip side, if you define a book as x,000 words, and you know how many you write on average – look at your last few books and divide the word count by the number of chapters, let’s call that average y – then you divide x by y to give yourself the number of chapters you need to write. Words divided by words/chapter gives chapter.)

Anyway, enough of that kind of malarkey. I’m five books (and Shunty’s jaunt) into the series, so I’m at the falling off a log bit. I’ve got a set of characters I’ve developed over the last few books who I know and not quite love, so I just need to focus on where to take them next. Whether that’s the morgue for plot reasons or the morgue because I’ve killed them, we shall see.

But halfway? That’s pretty good progress. It feels pretty thick and juicy without any redundant stuff.

#This Week

This week will be about finishing the buggering thing. I’ve got the idea all sculpted out, so it’s a case of joining the dots between the plot points to get to where I need to go with it. Almost all of the usual lot are there, but this book and book six are sort of pushing Marshall into places he’s not comfortable, because he’s too comfortable. And seeing how he reacts.

So, that’s me. Have a good week, if not a great one!

Cheers,
Ed