Cuckoobird live writing journal

As an experiment in radical writerly transparency, here's a live journal of my progress writing my next novel, which I'm calling Cuckoobird (the title will almost certainly change at some point). I try to work on the novel Monday to Friday mornings, but sometimes I have to switch over to other writing projects for a few weeks at a time.

11 June 2024

Day 1! A blank page. Everything is marvellous possibility; the book is in the best state it will ever be – perfect, and entirely hypothetical.

Armed only with the 1-page pitch that I sold to my publishers, I spent the day at the British Library with my best friend, trying to enter the world of the story. Skimmed some books and journal articles about Irish folklore, specifically changeling myths. Did some free writing inspired by prompts in X's The 90 Day Novel, mostly trying to work out who my protagonist is and what she wants.

17 June 2024

Imagined a first scene. It's feeling pretty fun! Decided not to set myself a daily word target this week and rather let myself just play.

Did some research into the protagonist's Olivia's main obsession (the intelligence of black soldier flies).

18 June 2024

Wrote some notes about the setting and the world. Did some more thinking about the protagonist and research into her interests.

Did a rough plotting exercise with Post-Its.

Put together a reading list and a watching list.

19 June 2024

Turned plotting notes into rough plot outlines. Right now, there are three options with quite different endings.

Set up my writing app Ulysses.

20 June 2024

Spent the day in the British Library imagining the key secondary characters.

Talked my longsuffering partner and bestie through the outlines and decided to combine two of them.

21 June 2024

Finalised a version of the outline that feels good enough to get going with.

24 June 2024

It's my birrrrrrrfday! And I wrote the first 1,000 words. Feel like I'm finding Olivia's voice.

26 June 2024

A great day at the British Library, after I spent yesterday couch rotting with a hangover, lol.

Wrote 1,500 words, more notes than prose, but that's okay. Had a good breakthrough about Olivia's relationship with her husband.

Sent off some interview requests.

Finding it tricky to write about the Cotswolds because I haven't been there in years, so started planning a research trip.

27 June 2024

Wrote 1,500 words. Feel like I'm building a skeleton - most of the scenes right now are barely more than notes. That's fine! Flesh can go on the skeleton later. Heck, I'm not even making a skeleton - I'm conjuring bones from thin air, who the fuck knows what order they'll go in, or if I've produced a thigh bone or a pigskull.

The big win today was beginning to write the village into existence. Also thought a bit more about Olivia's life and invented a few more key characters.

28 June 2024

Wrote 1,700 words. Tried the first horror scene. Reminding myself of Jordan Peale: "The first draft is making sand, so later I can make sandcastles." It's feeling quite dreamlike, and like these terrors are bubbling up from a deep meditative/trance state.

Also went down a little rabbit hole around Midsomer Murders and other Cotswolds lore.

1 July 2024

Slow! Felt a little ill. Did some more planning of my research trip. Thought about the setting in more detail. Only wrote a tiny 360 words of prose, which is not nothing.

2 July 2024

Another difficult writing day - didn't manage to get a word out. Did manage to interview someone, though, who had brilliant insights about Olivia's field of research. I feel like I have a fake supervisor for my fake PhD 😄

3 July 2024

After a slow start, I went to the Southbank Centre and wrote almost 3,000 words. Wrote a rough draft of the inciting incident scene. It was a sex scene, which felt weird to be writing in public, so I chickened out and wrote the whole thing in euphemisms, which might actually be much funnier than if I'd written it straight?

Feel like I'm stepping through time a little too slowly, perhaps, writing what characters are doing moment to moment. But I think that's how I always write first drafts.

4 July 2024

Wrote 2000 words! Finished off the inciting incident. The antagonist (Kiki) has arrived.

5 July 2024

Had a brilliant morning in the Wellcome Trust reading reading reading. Most interesting rabbit holes were about bog bodies, and how people used to hide cat skeletons in the walls of old English houses to keep witches out.

9 July 2024

Wrote 2000 words. Tried some of Kiki's point of view.

10 July 2024

Wrote 700 words, but also prepped for Cotswolds research trip.

13-14 July 2024

Very helpful research trip in the Cotswolds. Interviewed a police officer, a local hiker, and the staff of a record store. Lots of walking around and taking notes on sights, smells, people. Explored Stroud, Slad, Stow-on-the-wold, Painswick.

15-29 July 2024

Had to push pause to work on another project - sadface!

30 July 2024

Back to Cuckoobird! It took me a while to submerge myself back in the story, like a submarine having to fight through water pressure as it descends to the deeper ocean. Ended up re-reading the 16,000 words I have so far, and transcribing some of the voice notes I took on my Cotswolds research trip.

Went to work at the Tate Modern Member's Cafe and ended up eavesdropping on the family at the adjacent table, who gave me an entire scene. Young children are so delightfully weird.

Wrote 2,160 words of mess today, but I might be able to pan it later for gold flakes.

31 July 2024

Wrote 1300 words at the Keats Community Library. Felt like trying to make origami out of sludge.

1-5 August 2024

Paused to work on a freelance gig, and lost an additional writing day to just not being able to focus. Did some inspiring reading, though (Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper and Lucy Jones' Matrescence).

6 August 2024

Overflowing with words today. Wrote 1,500 words amongst a packed schedule of unrelated meetings and appointments. Thought a lot about Olivia's relationship with her best friend and wrote most of an Act 2 scene.

7-12 August 2024

At Glasgow Worldcon, which was deeply inspiring but not a conducive writing environment. Thought a lot about how I want the book to be weirder: more Bunny (Mona Awad) than Rebecca (Daphne du Mourier). I did manage some good writing on the train up (about 2,000 words of pedestrian but necessary scenes). Zero writing on the train back to London, squished into an overfull carriage with broken air-conditioning.

13 August 2024

Annoyed by how it always takes a while to get back into the novel after putting it down for even a couple of days. Managed 1,800 words, mostly reflections on marriage and how parenting a young child forces you to imagine terrors behind every corner.

Browsed a Cotswolds tourist guide and some local magazines I picked up while I was in Stroud for some setting flavour.

14 August 2024

Went down another research rabbit hole about insect cognition. Read up about what private investigators actually do all day. Played with good poetic words and reactivated my PLAY energy by writing a scene as poetry. Didn't get many words out, around 1,000, but they're superb words!

15-16 August 2024

Two sludgy days, a scant 1,100 words between the two of them. Friday was a delight spent in the British Library with a friend, researching flies.

Tried a different direction for a while before realising it's a dead end. Writing is a series of decisions. The "cide" in decide is the same suffix as "homocide" and "matricide", to murder, to destroy the alternative stories that can't be.

19 August 2024

Did a lot of work, but none of it writing.

20 August 2024

A good writing day, first time I hit my 2k word goal in ages. As Stephen King describes in Misery, when the writing's going well, it can feel like you fall through a hole in the laptop into the story.

21 August 2024

This song, which my mother used to sing to me as a child, was the inspiration for a scene. Slow today, but progressing.

22 August 2024

"Write drunk, edit sober," as the saying goes. I was not drunk today, but I was running on a notable lack of sleep, and was pretty pleased by the dreamlike prose it produced. The inner critic was dozing, leaving the sillier parts of my brain free to play.

At the moment, I'm just writing whatever fragments of scenes come into my mind, vaguely working through the outline, but not worrying about anything linking up yet.

Up until now, I've been writing in the first person, but over the past couple of days I've found myself switching into third, and it's unlocking something interesting.

23 August 2024

Just 500 words today, but I also spent some time playing with good cut-out words to reach for when the prose needs some enlivening. I am fond of a robust, Anglo-Saxon word.

27 August 2024

A good writing day after the last long weekend of the summer. Skipping from scene to scene, writing little fragments. Briefly considered buying a Black Soldier Fly Larval Farm for our garden so that I can more accurately describe the smells and taste of them, but talked myself out of it (my partner is pleased).

28 August 2024

Managed 1,400 words at the British Library before having lunch with some AI buddies at the Turing Institute, then losing the afternoon to a chaostornado of other work projects.

At least my writing week's going better than Kafka's.

May your writing week be better than Kafka's. pic.twitter.com/9hPoxWIQpQ

— Anna Mazzola (@Anna_Mazz) August 28, 2024

29 August 2024

Did not even open my writing software today. Day subsumed by pointless admin.

30 August 2024

My story's monster visited me in a vivid dream last night, so all I had to do today was write down the scene exactly as I dreamt it. Wish my bloody subconscious would do my writing work for me every day.