Friday 27 March 2026: British Summer Time

And here we are again. Not only is it Friday already, it’s also the last weekend of March. Our clocks go forward tomorrow night/Sunday morning, which I’m not looking forward to. I’m more of a GMT/winter gal myself. I’m not into these daylight saving clock changes all the time. I wish they’d just leave it as it is in the winter and have done with it. BST. Pah!

I’m late writing today’s post again, writing it today instead of yesterday as I went along. So it may be more disjointed than usual. Again. Although I’m doing it so often at the moment, the disjointed is the normal.

We were up on time, but we had a relaxed start as the poet’s first appointment wasn’t until 10am. I had my dirty cuppa followed by my reading half hour but then I went straight into household chores. I’ve decided morning pages need to be first job at my desk. I hung some washing up and put some washing through. I fed the birds, and I fed the dog.

I took him for his walk. Only a short one, but gosh, he was good. We saw 2 people and 1 dog and he didn’t bark or pull once. He waited at every kerb to cross the road, and he walked when he was told he could walk. I was very pleased with him. Perhaps we need to get him behaving nicely on short walks before taking him on longer walks.

Back home and at my desk I did those morning pages, this time thrashing out my order of study. I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the depth workshops at the moment and thought the information flow workshop might take a different direction. It did, but he mentioned writing into the dark again, without an outline, without any prep work, and cycling back…

I’ve read the book on writing into the dark and I’ve watched the lecture, and I kinda know what he’s going on about. But I’m not sure how the cycling back works for him and, apparently, others. As part of our depth in action workshop last week, one assignment was to read the opening 20 chapters of his novel Dead Money, in which he wanted to demonstrate the multi-viewpoint character method.

He also says that this book was written into the dark as well, and once I’d finished the first 20 chapters, I wanted to read the rest of it, (a) because I was enjoying the story, and (b) to see an  example of a book that was written into the dark. And I did, finishing it yesterday morning during my reading half hour. But I still wanted to know how he did it, with so many different story threads. (Although I did guess the denouement ahead of time.)

So I decided (in my morning pages) to switch away from the depth bundle for a week and look at the writing into the dark workshop, as it’s there on my WMG Teachable dashboard. When I completed the great novella challenge last year, my reward was all the workshops already in existence and for the rest of time (or lifetime). So it’s there, right in front of me. It’s also been revived this year as a live workshop where we can submit assignments, I think. But for now, I just want to understand it and do the assignments for my own benefit.

I went through and moved the rest of the depth bundle workshops along by 6 days and inserted the writing into the dark workshop for the next 6 days. I’d already watched Week 1 of the information flow workshop, but I marked it for revision in the schedule when it pops up again after next week.

I located my existing copy of Kill Game, the first Dean Wesley Smith book in the Cold Poker Gang series, which features characters from Dead Money, and I located my existing copy of his book Writing into the Dark. I’ll watch the workshops, read the companion book (which is being updated this year, I think, and which I think I might get again in return for backing another Kickstarter), and read another book he wrote into the dark.

And then I sat and watched Week 1 of the workshop, which is an introduction to the method. At the end of it, I even had a go at the assignment, after first making a Scrivener binder just for WMG Workshop assignments. I wrote just over 500 words ‘into the dark’ featuring a brand-new character and set in the here and now, rather than use an existing series character.

I do admit to cheating slightly, although I didn’t use any of it this time. I also copied into the Scrivener binder 3 templates: a cosy novelette template for 24,000 words, a cosy novella template for 40,000 words, and a Save the Cat template for 80,000 words. Call it a safety net, if you like, but it felt like a comfort blanket having those in the binder too, even if I did only use a single ‘scene’ document for the exercise.

I’m not sure if I could truly write into the dark. I’m a planner through and through, I even outline short stories. And when I was ghostwriting those 12 Regency romance novels of 83,000 words apiece, I would have failed without an outline supporting me. But I’m willing to give it a go. One should never stop learning, even at the top of their game, in my opinion.

So, all self-indulgent jobs done and out of the way, I turned to the rest of the day’s work, which was editing. I have more of that to do today and probably next week. But we now have 2 4-day weeks on the trot, which is great but it does mean I lose 2 work days. I’ll try and finish the editing job next week and a proofreading job the week after.

Other jobs today include Week 2 of the writing into the dark workshop, possibly Assignment 2, and this month’s take one idea for the writing prompts series.

Have a fab weekend!

This post appears on Words Worth Writing, Medium and Patreon.