A bit quiet in here - I've been off working on my novels rather than thinking about them.

I now have a mind map of the artifacts in the first book. This is important for me because I made up a lot of things on the fly when doing the first draft, and it is difficult to maintain consistency. I did start a similar project on the novel before using just text, but it was too heavyweight so it never got finished.

I have also finally read and applied corrections to the zeroth draft of the second book in the trilogy. The feeling of the second books is very different from the first, but it is still interesting. A bit wandery in the middle there, but still interesting. I will be starting a mind map of book two at some point.

However, the main task I have now is to make book one more compelling. Working on the book over the last eighteen months or so it has been apparent that it is an interesting concept and good characters, but there is no real core to the story.

Then a week or so ago I went to a writing seminar talking about story telling in novels. It was mainly about the traditional three act structure, but the thing that was most interesting to me was that we talked a lot about how to keep the reader reading and how to involve them in the story. Inevitably, my multi-viewpoint story didn't really fit well into the discussion (I was really surprised to be the only writer working on a multi-viewpoint story - this style is positively pervasive in speculative fiction) but I have some reading recommendations and some ideas.

The main thing is that it was direction at a good time. I have read discussions of the three act structure but rejected it because I was not ready to think about it, and it seemed quite stayed. Now I have a huge pile of unpublishable words I am wondering how to make the characters more involving and the story more intense - it is time to think seriously about the inciting incident, the dramatic reversal, and so on.

At least it is easy to identify the overall antagonist for the trilogy.

It seems I only post here when I am in transition in some way - the status quo does not generate posts.

I have been working (almost five months in my new job), running (ran 20 miles over the course of the week, and down to 8:08 on one five mile run), and writing.

The thing I have been doing is to write mind maps of my story, chapter by chapter. This is necessary not to track plot, but to have some record of the plants, animals, places and characters that I have made up. There are plot details too, but mostly it is just taking note of the world.

Here's a question - do fossils only form in wet sediment?

Another thought I had while I was out running today is to wonder how many novels I have in my head, competing for attention. The answer, much to my surprise, is ten.

No wonder I feel frustrated that I don't do enough writing.

I have been thinking that I needed to implement a "Getting Things Done"-like system for a while (aka GTD), largely because I have not in fact been getting things done. This has actually happened in the last day or so.

I've been using a week log-based system for about ten years. This is great for keeping history, but not so good for either remembering things you need to do long term nor for tracking long term tasks.

So a few months ago I added another file to my regular week logging system called todo¹. This would be a text file where each line is an item to work on. The items are tagged with project and context labels so the file can be searched on, and I can add any data I need to each entry.

However, I found this unsatisfactory.

First of all, the content of the todo file was stale almost as soon as I entered it because of exactly the same problem that I ended up having with Hiveminder - I can see everything at once, but there is too much to see. I knew this going in really, but I had also bought into the ideas of Lifehacker about using a single text file and slicing it with grep. A laudable goal, but one which was just incompatible with how I actually work.

Secondly, I followed the advice of David Allen's book and mixed work and personal stuff in the same file.

Now, this is actually something I would probably be quite happy with if I had a different job, or at least a different working style. The basic problem is that I use two computers - one for work, and one for home. The corollary is that I am not very happy about mixing personal and work stuff.

Lots of reasons to change, which in fact have existed for a long time, but no very clear idea of what to change to.

Then I remembered the project files that GTD describes. These are repositories for anything you need to work on the project: it's where plans go; it's where discoveries and ideas go; most crucially, it's where logging goes.

So I have sliced up my massive todo file into project files. The todo file still exists, although it's renamed to "active" and contains only next actions for projects. And I review it every day.

The project files live alongside the active file and contain the project history, plans, discoveries, and so on. There is also a "someday" file which holds ideas for things to do in my copious free time. The week log is still around too, since that is something that I really do not want to entirely discard.

This setup is the same at home and at work. Most of the project files are particular to the location, with the following exceptions -

• active: things I need to do in the day are the same wherever they are
• organisation project file: the organisation challenges are the same in both spots too
• work project file: this is maintained at home as a place to put ideas I have about work while at home.
• home project file: like the work project file, but the other way around

So this is another iteration in my ongoing quest for a system I can make work. I'm optimistic about this one because it's chunked enough that I can look at everything I need in one glance, but incorporates regular review to keep things fresh.

Because if I don't look at any of the lists then I night as well not make them.

[1] not the first time I have tried adding a file like this. Last time I tried I called it "pigs", named from a recurring joke on the Dead Ringers radio show about an Archers character who said "That won't get the pigs in."

I've complained before about Weight Watchers old programme, mostly with the observation that I was on too few points to have a soft landing when I reached my goal weight.

Well, I've found something else to whinge about: exercise points.

One of the things I really do like about Weight Watchers is that you can earn points by exercising. You get a little slide rule calculator for this much as you do for calculating food points.

Now, the food formula has been reverse engineered and published. Broadly speaking, it's one point for fifty kCals, with some adjustments for fibre and fat content. Fair enough.

The exercise formula doesn't seem to be available, and I think part of the reason is that the exercise calculator is based on perceived effort. This is quite a good measure, especially when you are first starting to exercise because it captures some component of the energy your body is putting into conditioning itself. That's probably pretty valuable, but the problem for me is that it leads me to underestimate my effort after the conditioning is largely done.

So, I have always scored running as being "high" effort - partly because I always push, and partly because the exercise calculator has "running" as one of the example activities. So a five mile run comes in at about 7 points earned.

But cycling? Well... the exercise calculator gives that as an example of a "medium" effort activity. I bumped up my perceived effort a bit to account for the way I push on the bike, but I was still scoring my bike rides to and from work as being halfway between "medium" and "high" effort earning about 8 points for my round trip to work.

Then I checked an exercise calorie counter. That gave me these numbers:

Activity	Time	Energy Used
Running @ 9 min mile pace	45 mins	670 kCal
Cycling @ 16-19 min mile pace	35 mins	570 kCal

Two things immediately struck me:

1. it looks like an exercise point is about 100 kCal once conditioned, and bollocks to this perceived effort nonsense
2. minute for minute, I burn about the same energy cycling as I do running

So this explains why I was so often absolutely hollowed out after biking to and from work, and it means I will be counting my trip to and from work a lot more like two five mile runs than one. It also explains why my cycling never seemed to really help me lose weight, because my body was going into famine mode when I was just not feeding it enough food.

Lesson learned, I think.

My biggest problem with editing my manuscripts is that I don't know how to start, but a related problem is that I fear that I won't know when to stop.

What I get paid for is writing software and the things around software (one of the oft overlooked truths about software is that so much of it is writing text to support the code, document the design, tell people how to use the code, and so on). I like it because I get paid to write, but also there is a constant problem solving hit: there are always faults to find, bugs to fix, and processes to document.

But there is also a reasonably well-defined end point for software: does the code do what it is supposed to do? Do the users understand how to use the tool? Have all the tests needed to verify the behaviour of the tool been written?

Similarly there is a very obvious end point with writing a manuscript: has the plot resolved itself? Have the characters done all of the things that were supposed to achieve? Have you hit you word count goal?

I don't see such a well-defined end point for the editing process, and maybe that is the root of some of my uncertainty and, dare I say it, reluctance when starting the edit of my novel - I don't know what my novel would look like when it's finished, so I don't know how to get there.

Certainly something to think about further, but for now that's five minutes.

I finally finished my "where the heck am I?" read through of book one of my trilogy this morning.

I had started this read through of the book mind mapping the details as I went. This isn't so much about the plot as the invented minutiae of the world: plant species, animal species, place names, social customs, and so on. However, I stopped doing the mapping after four chapters, partly because it was very distracting but mostly because I was mapping in a large sketch book which was just too unwieldy to use in bed while reading a loosely bound manuscript.

The mind mapping still needs to happen since otherwise I will have no sense of continuity in the world.

But it is still an interesting world.

The thing that's missing in the plot is a true crisis: there is one manufactured by the religious leaders, but there is little internal justification for the actions of one of the MCs and that bothers me.

There is, in other words, more to be done here.

But that's OK. That's what editing and rewriting is about.

That's five minutes for now, though.

The film of "Watchmen" is here.

I love the original graphic novel. It was a book I read many times, and it is probably time for me to read it again. The trailer for the film that came out last year (gosh, a whole year ago?) mesmerised me - the visual sensibility and the effects looked to have captured the essence of the world quite beautifully.

But then Fox sued Warner to try and block release of the film. The reasons were stupid contractual ones, as far as I could figure out: rights which had probably lapsed but which might not have done. I didn't really care - it just confirmed Fox as the studio for geeks to hate (the other prime example being the cancellation of the TV show "Firefly").

That case was settled and the film was set to be released, but then I heard whispers of unwelcome tweaks to the plot.

Curiously, given my outraged reaction to the weird butchery of the Lord of the Rings films, these rumours did not concern me greatly. "V for Vendetta" and "The Prestige" demonstrated that changing the plot doesn't always fail - both films are in my opinion much tighter and more visceral stories than the original books. Obviously The "Watchmen" team is not the same as either of those, but I have hope.

The two reviews of "Watchmen" I have read were reasonably positive. That's high praise for what was undoubtedly seen as just another superhero film befre being viewed.

I don't think I will get to see it at the cinema, but I am really looking forward to seeing the film when it comes out on DVD.