Progrep 1: Writing by Recording

This is my first official Progress Report on writing the new novel tentatively titled Eyes on the Mountain, set on and around Mt. Shasta in Northern California.

Two days ago I reread the first four completed chapters and made line edits, mostly to condense descriptive details in chapter two that were slowing down the pace in an unnecessary (and I think self-indulgent) way. Yesterday I wrote the first scene in chapter five.  The scene is only two pages long, but I’m pleased with it and was surprised when a hitherto nonexistent character hauled her opinions and her laptop onto the stage.  (That’s not figurative. There’s a stage in the scene.)

I had a difficult time getting into the scene, so I tried a trick that I’ve used successfully when writing nonfiction:  I left my office, sat in the cat porch, and used the voice memo function on my phone to record myself speaking sentences instead of typing them.  The results were mixed; none of the recorded text ended up in the scene once I returned to the office and started typing, but the words I had spoken gave me something to work from, mainly because those words allowed me to see what would work when the recorded words didn’t.