Stuart MacBride is not just another Scot. He’s the best-selling author of the Logan McRae police procedural series. The man knows a thing or two about Scotland and also about writing. He recently said that your first book is probably crap. Stuart learned an important safety tip from another best-selling author, Socrates, who in 399 B.C. told his “Introduction to Novel Writing” students that their first book was definitely crap. His students forced him to drink hemlock.

MacBride said the first book he wrote was crap. The second book he wrote was crap. The third book he wrote he didn’t describe, but it sold after he became a best-selling novelist, so it must have been salvageable crap. The fourth book he wrote was crap. The first book he sold was the fifth book he wrote.

I appreciate the warning, laddie, but frankly, I don’t have that kind of time.

I don’t expect my book to be long-listed, short-listed, nominated, or selected. Nor will I consent to be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. I intend to finish this draft, get the feedback I need, rewrite it, find an agent, and see it into print. While all that is going on, I’ll start writing my second book. Which, I hope, will not be crap.

Word count: 70,353. I’ve written 60,000 words since January 1, despite my wife’s surgery and Trump’s war on the United States. I’ve sailed 5,000 words past my original conception of the book. For what seemed like days, if not forever, my protagonist was standing at the edge of a forest. I didn’t know what to do with him. And then somehow I did know, and he walked into the trees, where I had figured out what for the love of god was waiting.

This way of writing is alien to my wife, who wrote six mystery novels under her pen name, Deborah Donnelly. I have no deadline. Ms. Donnelly had one every year, and she was writing mysteries vs. whatever it is that has me in a muddle. She had to condense the nonsense. She couldn’t think halfway through, “Maybe this character will be the murderer. No? How about this character?” or “Clues. I want one.” She had it all figured out in the beginning. As usual.

How Lucky handles deadline pressure.