MAMA 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 MAMA (née Cuckoobird, née Sweetrot - 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 Alan Watt'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.

September 2024 - October 2025

In September, I got pulled into an unrelated project. This turned into a year's hiatus on Cuckoobird, somehow! Sometimes that's how life goes. I was very busy in the meantime! But did not touch this project.

2 October 2025

My first day back with the project in a year. Spent the day re-reading everything I've written, all the notes and scraps and fragments, trying to re-immerse myself in the bog.

Pleased to find it's funny, and I like it more than I'd feared.

3 October 2025

Read, thought, journaled about the book.

6 October 2025

I'm afraid to look at it. My brain keeps refusing the work. I went down an admin spiral of distraction and wrote maybe 50 words.

7 October 2025

Spent a lot of time on the train today, which helped me turn the key in the lock. Wrote on my journal, lots of thoughts about social class, about university, about who Olivia is and where she comes from. My brain is finally getting back into the story. The characters are talking to me again.

The prose is not yet coming.

8 October 2025

Had a fun day at the British Library with my best boy digging through insect mating books. Didn't write a lot but gathered a lot of thoughts. Did some plotting, integrating the Gemma sub-plot.

The project is alive in my thoughts again. I'm finding ideas coming to me as I'm walking around the city, and have to voice-note them into my watch before they're gone, like catching butterflies.

9 October 2025

I feel such shame when I think about a whole lost year. What was I doing? Did I work at all?

I sat down and listed everything I did accomplish over that time, and reminded myself that I actually have done a lot. The biggest chunk of lost time went to rewriting Manage Your Money and editing Femme Feral. I finished some other small projects. But I was also connecting with my joy again. Resting. I need to find a way to be okay with that.

10 October 2025

Met up with my friend Dashe to do a little writing in a cafe. Was so pleased that I managed to hit the week's word target after I'd assumed I wouldn't. Began the day feeling low about the fact that even after all of this I'm still not really back in the project. Ended the day feeling really proud of myself for that last push. It's amazing what you can accomplish in just a few focused hours, if you let yourself.

13 October 2025

Began the day with a leisurely slow sauna with my friend Sidd.
Got into a really good scene inspired by a party I went to over the weekend with a lot of kids. Got to my day's 2k words quite easily.

Keep reminding myself, first, make it exist. Later, make it good.

Read a bit of a parenting book. Still feeling very unsure and like I don't know how to write four/five year olds. And scared that I'll offend some of my dearest friends, who are parents (Olivia hates children).

14 October 2025

A slow start, but it came eventually! Managed 2k by lunchtime. Wrote some aftermath of the party scene, then veered into a full horror moment. Starting to see the story physics of cause and effect come into play.

Morning pages in my journal are so valuable in my process. I find I'm often beginning with a rough sketch of a scene there then the work of the morning is just to give it flesh.

15 October 2025

Worked at Queen Mary University Library. Love that I have a little growing library card collection. Libraries are magical spaces.

A good 2k word day. Venturing into the end of act 2. Finding that the plot outline is pulling in a different way to where the characters organically want to go. Yesterday I followed the characters, today I've tried stepping back onto the outline's path just to see how it feels. This is still feeling unresolved and like it needs more exploration.

16 October 2025

Wrote 1k words of a violent drowning scene at the British Library. Uncomfortable to write such ugliness in public. Uncomfortable to write such ugliness at all.

17 October 2025

A distracted day because of Femme Feral publicity. Managed 600 words.

20 October 2025

Worked at the Groucho Club with my writing club. Tried a whole scene set 400 years ago. Figuring out the backstory of the village and the rules of the world.

Wrote 3,800 words, but feeling a bit despondent and like this is pointless. This is unlikely to make it into the manuscript. Trying to remind myself I'm making compost.

Read Catriona Ward's brilliant Nowhere Burning this weekend which has inspired some thoughts about horror setpieces, and about stories being motivated by love.

21 October 2025

Worked at my studio on a horror scene. Riffing off some ideas from The Archeology of Ritual and Magic and from visiting Sutton House.

Gathering good momentum. I've been hitting my word count goal consistently for weeks now, although it still feels more like typing than writing.

22 October 2025

Worked at the Barbican. Some brilliant visual inspiration about rivers from Lucy Raven. Went back over research material from my trip last year and thought about the setting, specifically the River Severn, and how oxbows are formed. Wrote some more of act 3.

23 October 2025

Had a chat with a friend that unlocked something big. In describing the concept to her, I was reminded of what's fun about the idea. Then I went home and ... entirely figured out the world building?? Saw the whole plot just reveal itself in front of my eyes???

It was one of those days everything felt suddenly clear and solid in my hands.

I feel so grateful to myself for not having given up; grateful I've kept pushing into the muck.

24 October 2025

Started the day gathering visual inspiration. Henry Fuseli. The Realms of Imagination book. Thinking about fae folklore. Tam Lin. Goblin markets. Figured out the name of the village.

Very pleased to be ending the week on 60k words - ahead of where I'd hoped to be. Feel like I'm about done with the vomit draft. Ready to actually start writing the first real draft. It's all feeling so clear now.

4-6 November 2025

Took a break for a week after finishing the vomit draft. Went to Fantasycon, wrote a journal article, got over the flu, and dived back into work today.

Didn't write any words for the actual manuscript this week, but did a lot of good prep work. Organised Obsidian. Made a lot of decisions, e.g. the names of people, places. Fleshed out a bunch of things that are in my head and put it down in the story bible. Drew a floorplan of the house. Wrote a detailed outline.

10 November 2025

Began draft 1 today in earnest! Wrote a first pass of chapter 1, a very saggy 3,354 words, at the British Library. Olivia's coming across as much too mean, but it's fine for now. I'll fix it later. Gemma (the best friend)'s name is now Mac.

11 November 2025

Edited chapter 1, getting it down to a more reasonable 2,800 words with much better flow and sliiiighly less sass. Still too much sass.

Wrote chapter 2, 1,866 words, and outlined chapter 3. Moving a bit too slowly for an opening, not enough is happening quickly enough, but I'm feeling good about Olivia's voice, and the world is feeling detailed and precise. I can see things clearly in my mind.

There are way, way too many jokes 🙈. Most of them will have to go in the next pass!

Okay LOL to be totally honest I then entirely stopped keeping the writing journal until March 2026 - everything from here is reconstructed from memory, my writing software's daily word tracker, and my notebooks!

13 November 2025

A scant 668 words!

14 November 2025

TRIED to work from the Natural History Museum cafe and instead spent the day looking at dinosaurs with my best boy. Zero words; many skeletons; no regrets.

17 November 2025

A good sensible workday of 2,216 words. I'm still stuck in act 1 and feeling like it's moving way too slow, taking me too long to get into the story. I tried restarting it in third person past, with a much bigger psychic distance between narrator and protagonist, just moving through the events of the story much more quickly. It was helpful.

18 November 2025

Day subsumed by teaching. Joyful, but the stress is building. I owe my publisher a solid draft by the end of January and suddenly that seems ... worryingly soon.

19 November 2025

399 words. I resumed the distant third person perspective experience, but ultimately I decided I'm losing too much. Olivia's voice is so much of the joy of the book. Blarghhhhhh.

My brain keeps wanting to think about alternative career paths instead of just writing.

20-21 November 2025

Giving a paper at a conference on writing for young people so didn't write. Thought about how in order to have children, you must have faith in the future.

22 November - 1 December 2025

Went on holiday in France and Portugal. Body mass now 30% custard tarts.

2-5 December 2025

A disaster week. I can't remember the last time so many terrible things happened to me at the same time. Can I blame the Supermoon? Literally my Mum's house was struck by lightning and they had a fire and this was, like, the third worst thing to happen this week??

I managed 700 words in total across the whole week, and frankly managing ANY was a huge fucking achievement.

8 December 2025

469 words. Distracted, scared and sad.

9 December 2025

2,447 words, written entirely from bed! I think this is self care?

10 December 2025

Teaching all day in Bath. Thought I'd manage some writing on the train but nope. Still very distracted by the disasters.

11 December - 25 December 2025

Had to fly home for a family emergency. Very impressed I managed to do any work at all. Managed 8,749 words over this period, in Cape Town, before landing back in London at midnight like Santa.

I'm on 20k words.

26 December 2025

Who's working on Boxing Day? ME that's who, writing almost 4,000 words in full PANIC about the fact that my end-of-January deadline is looming and I've just lost almost three weeks of focussed time with all the various disasters. Ready to go deep into the work cave and do nothing but write.

Finally, finally managed to push into act 2. Getting into the fun and games, Olivia trying to do parenting despite knowing nothing about parenting. The plot is moving, at last, at last.

27 December 2025

2,269 words! Cooking. Found ways to interweave specific memories of playing with friends' kids into the plots. Kids are so delightfully freaking weird.

29 December 2025

Time has no meaning. Partner sweetly pops to my desk and leaves me mince pies and tea every few hours. Happy to be back home and in the work cave. 1,958 words today.

30 December 2025

I've secretly always loved working this time of year. It's quiet, peaceful. I feel like I'm plunging deep into the recesses of my mind. 1,055 words today.

2 January 2026

2,124 words. Deep in the cave.

3 January 2026

2,171 words. Slow steady spelunking.

5 January 2026

2,028 words. Deep in the cave.

6 January 2026

It was snowing and I went to work at the Opera House. Snuck in a lunchtime rehearsal performance of La Traviata, and wrote 973 words. I love London so bloody much.

Been thinking a lot about finding the FUN and wildness in the novel. What engine drives the story. Reading My Life In Sea Creatures by Sabrina Imbler and in awe of how they interweave their descriptions of nature and their own memories.

7 January 2026

Solid writing day of 2,037 words. Still feeling stressed about the deadline but not feeling panicked. Ready to start getting into a calmer normal work week routine.

8 January 2026

Went to the BLOOMSBURY OFFICES for an interview with the FREAKING OBSERVER about Femme Feral. Did not work on the project today, but felt bolstered by the fact that I have previously written books! It's just possible that I can write another one!

9 January 2026

Worked at British Library and smashed through 3,050 words. Then went to see the Secret Maps exhibition, where my brain was already starting to squirrel away inspiration for the next novel (because it's bored of thinking about this one).

12 January 2026

Had a photo shoot with the Observer and felt like I was in fricking Vogue. Lots of stressing about what to wear; some reading; no writing today.

13 January 2026

Only managed 1,000 words today. Fantasised about making my desk setup cosier. I'm in the muddle of the middle and bored with the story. Things coming slowly. Wrote an unwieldy family brunch scene. Reminded myself I just need to keep taking steps, a step every day.

I have 2.5 weeks left. Doing some frantic maths and realising I must finish act 2 by Sunday, but that feels plausible! I need to write 3 more chapters in the next 3 days, and I have rough drafts for 2 of them.

14 January 2026

Got stuck. Stopped. Regrouped. Went analogue for a bit. Printed out all the snippets I wrote for act 2 in the zero draft and colour-coded, grouped, tried to wrangle them into shape.

Added 4k words into the draft just by finding bits I'd written for the zero draft that actually work quite well with just a bit of connective tissue added. And feel more confident I understand how the middle progresses.

15 January 2026

Things actually falling into place. Spent more time with the printouts and playing with plot plans. Only wrote 1,400 fresh words today, but made substantial progress figuring out how it all fits together.

16 January 2026

Found another 5,375 words from the zero draft that fitted into the manuscript with some alterations. Today felt like hacking up old t-shirts into a quilt.

Got the big midpoint scene working, ish.

18 January 2026

Working on a Sunday - I'm usually quite good about respecting a Monday-Friday work routine but these are desperate times! My life right now is quite monklike. I'm working, running, having meals with my wonderfully supportive best boy, thinking, that's it. Honestly I'm enjoying it a lot. For me, having a balanced life doesn't mean that every day is balanced, but rather going through phases of intense focus on different parts of my life. This writing-focussed time feels like an incredible luxury.

1,003 words today and some more planning and research about contemporary parenting debates. Almost at the end of act 2 but not quite.

19 January 2026

3,800 words. Still trying to get to the end of act 2. Deeply locked in. Writing. Knitting. Running. Eating. Sleeping.

20 January 2026

OKAY YES I finally got to the end of act 2 with another 3,412 words. Writing about the masochism we require of motherhood.

21 January 2026

Hitting act 3 hard with 5,109 words today, some rescued from the zero draft. Good momentum now.

22 January 2026

3,119 words. The one major thing I'm still really unresolved about is her husband. His motivations change scene to scene. Thought about the husbands in The Yellow Wallpaper and Rosemary's Baby and wondered about making Stuart a much more frightening character.

My notebooks are full of frantic pages exploring different directions the story could still go. Deep into the horror sequences now. Feeling quite primal, feral, the strangest version of myself (I like her).

23 January 2026

2,875 words. Feeling so grateful to my best boy and to friends who keep showing up, making me take a shower, dragging me out the house to do something for a couple of hours. I have promised to try to have a weekend. Even more remarkably, I'm almost at my (minimum) total word count. I could hand in the book tomorrow and it would be enough! Sure, it wouldn't have a third act, but it would have the minimum required number of words to be called a novel! Feel extremely bolstered by this fact.

26 January 2026

3,200 words today. It was so cold I worked with my hat and gloves on inside the house. Wrote all day and read Katherine Briggs' book about the folklore of the Cotswolds at night.

Coming into my last week. Wrote a breakdown of how I can finish by Saturday, which will require writing about 2 (short) chapters a day. YIKE. But it feels fine. I trust the momentum I've built up by now.

27 January 2026

4,700 frantic words written largely in my notebook, which is also a cryptic mess of scene maps trying to work out how the hell I can end the story.

28 Jan

Got too hyped up yesterday writing and struggled to sleep. 1,437 fresh words today plus typed up some of yesterday's. Then decided I needed to get out the damn house and went to the V&A East with my best boy.

29 January 2026

I am a machine that turns coffee into words. Read some hilarious essays about the latest parenting fad, FAFO parenting (fuck around, find out).

4,579 words and the end is in sight.

30 January 2026

Finished it in a final frenzy of 7,722 words. I hate it. But it's done.

31 January 2026

Wrote a brief coda, a last 1,020 words. Exported it to MS Word, emailed it to my editors, and promptly turned into a puddle.

February - April 2026

Working on other projects while I wait for notes from my editors. Wrote a screenplay and some essays and did a ton of Femme Feral publicity.

Been debating titles. The working title was Cuckoobird, but it's obvious and overdone. I started calling it Sweetrot for a while, but now I'm circling something with the word "MAMA" in it. "Mama Bare"? "OH MAMA"?