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Writing a new book is like being in a new relationship, you have to meet and get to know your manuscript. We asked the crime writer Denise Mina to write us an exclusive diary charting the progress of her new novel. She has set herself the target of writing a thousand words a day. Spoiler alert: not much writing gets done, but a collection of coloured pens comes into its own, as does a pair of Margaret Howell trousers.

Don explains that his new anthology ‘The Zoo of the New’ (Penguin) was inspired by ‘The Rattle Bag’ (Faber), the seminal 1982 collection edited by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes. Organised alphabetically, and by title, the collection offers the reader many strange juxtapositions, as writers who are not normally read alongside each other find themselves meeting across the page.

Tessa Hadley’s new collection ‘Bad Dreams’ (Cape) is filled with strange meetings, from a child who is meeting with the novel she is secretly writing, to a grieving friend turning up out of the blue. Tessa explains that she is interested in writing about people on the sidelines, who often lack self-consciousness in encounters with others, because they think nobody is watching them.

We forced the writer Jack Bernhardt to put on shoulder pads, metaphorically, and immerse himself in the boardroom meetings of 1980s Hollywood films, almost of all which seem to feature Michael J Fox.  He makes great use of the common tropes of the genre to create an exclusive mini-drama for The Verb called: ‘Every Single Final Business Meeting Scene From A Bad 80’s Film About Business’. Expect obvious baddies, dubious dialogue and token minority characters.