My writing has speeded up marvellously since I learned a simple trick. If there’s something I don’t know, or a sequence I can’t quite visualise, I make a note and move on.

Below, I’ve included an excerpt from Unkept Promises, the next Redepenning novel, full of notes to myself

How about you? What do you do in your rough drafts, and are you game to post an example in the comments?

Fortune and Hannah met them at the dock gates with the break, a large open carriage capable of taking the entire family along the coast to eat the picnic that was undoubtedly in the covered baskets Jules could see tucked under the seats.

[check where a picnic might take place. During drive, Jules abstracted, thinking about what the girls and Mia have told him. Dan pointing out all the different types of ship in the harbour, where they might have come from and be going, and what they were good for. Girls asking questions until he gets to one he can’t answer and askes Jules who shakes off his mood and attends.]

Hannah and Mia set the picnic up in the shade of a tree [rock?? Pavilion they brought with them???] and soon they were all enjoying [etc. Not sure what I want to do with this part of the scene. Girls need to ask politely to be allowed to leave the …. blanket? ]

[Hannah produces a ball, suggests a game. Girls against boys. Dan scathing about the girls’ likely ability.]

“Could we sit this one out?” Jules asked Mia. “I’d like for us to talk, if you do not mind.”

“Of course,” Mia said. “Hannah, you and the others go ahead.”

In moments, the game was underway, Hannah and the girls against Fortune and Dan. Dan’s confidence took a swift knock when Fortune failed to catch the ball Dan had thrown and Marsha raced in front of him and kicked it to Hannah, who in her turn kicked it between the rocks they had marked as the girl’s goal.

He rallied, though, and the next round of play saw him sneaking the ball from under Marsha’s nose and kicking his own goal.

“This will do the girls a world of good,” Mia decided. “I have not wanted to venture beyond the boundaries of town without an escort, and there is no where there they can run and romp like this without censure from the biddies.”

“You are determined to turn them into English gentlewomen.” Jules tried to keep the censure from his voice. He would allow his unaccountable wife her chance to make her case, but what the hell was she thinking?

“I am determined to make sure they know Society’s expectations,” Mia corrected. “I know how it feels to be at sea, knowing that something you have done has drawn disapprobation, but having no idea what it is or how to correct it. I will not leave them as ill prepared as I was.”

What had happened to Mia to fuel the vehemence of her tone? He supposed he understood. The child he’d met in the smuggler’s cave had been raised by a reclusive scholar — or had raised herself while ignored by her father.

“I thought my father and Susan would look out for you,” he said. They should have. He had trusted them to do so.

“It was not their fault, Captain.” Mia smiled, and reached out as if to pat his hand where it rested be-side hers on the blanket. If that was her intent, she thought better of it and instead folded it in her lap with its counterpart. “They are part of Society. They grew up knowing all the habits of courtesy your kind take for granted, and all your silly little rituals. It never occurred to them that I was as ignorant of what to them seemed natural behaviour. They were always there to tell me what I had done wrong, and they tried to predict my next mistake and prevent it — but I made so many!” The last was said with a laugh, but Jules could sense pain beneath it, and his heart ached for the little girl he had abandoned.

“I am sorry,” he said. “I had no idea.”

“I will not have that happen to Marshanda and Adarinta.