Over the weekend, I decided that I'm going to refer to my new novel as the Dakota Project. That's not going to be the title of the novel – definitely not – but it'll do as shorthand so that when I need to, I can refer specifically to what I'm working on.

Dakota is the name of the protagonist, of that I'm absolutely certain; I'm still working on almost everything else. The thing about working on a novel is that a lot of time is spent thinking and researching and sketching and planning and then...