A couple days I wrote a post "Good Writing Is Not Automatic" and presented a Cowachunga passage I had been working on for a couple hours. I was hoping to illustrate my particular technique of writing-–typically beginning with straightforward prose, of a sort that could plausibly inhabit a blog entry.
Two days later, the same two paragraphs have, like sea monkeys, expanded and taken life of their own. Here it is, the beginning of Cowachunga 2.8 in its current iteration:
"Kyle and Dylan scanned the darkness with quiet intensity as the Mustang slowed to inch-by-inch progression. The high beam petered out a few feet off the road, engulfed in night, the hint of moonlight over the ridge only accentuating a lack of artificial exuberance. There was a good chance they had already passed the turn-off…. Kyle squinted at a hint of car tracks veering off the road. “Shit, I think that was––” the car shot into reverse across center-ridged divider, Kyle’s hands flailing for something to hold onto. He lurched forward as brakes screeched in resounding assertion of control over an engine seeking alpha. Holding sides of the seat with rigid grip, he readied for lift off––Dylan was clearly going to reassert himself in the most reckless way possible. Instead, there was an awkward clearing of the throat. “Sorry, I’m not used to putting this thing into reverse."
Dylan eased the Mustang onto the unmarked track with painful slowness, clearly expecting the sort of disintegration that had occurred after Beatty. Instead, the car’s grip on the road held as they skirted the edges of the ridge. After a quarter mile a gentle rise, larger bumps and pockets of erosion providing a constant jitter. Dylan gradually accelerated, trusting that the road was well enough maintained to allow coherent progress. A sense of anticipation building with each successive bend. It was not simply imminent reconnection with mystic herb under a star-brushed sky. There was also the prospect of friendship unearthed at its primal foundation––the reestablishing of connections submerged over time in an staccato of jobs, girlfriends, self-inflicted deadlines.
.
Two days later, the same two paragraphs have, like sea monkeys, expanded and taken life of their own. Here it is, the beginning of Cowachunga 2.8 in its current iteration:
"Kyle and Dylan scanned the darkness with quiet intensity as the Mustang slowed to inch-by-inch progression. The high beam petered out a few feet off the road, engulfed in night, the hint of moonlight over the ridge only accentuating a lack of artificial exuberance. There was a good chance they had already passed the turn-off…. Kyle squinted at a hint of car tracks veering off the road. “Shit, I think that was––” the car shot into reverse across center-ridged divider, Kyle’s hands flailing for something to hold onto. He lurched forward as brakes screeched in resounding assertion of control over an engine seeking alpha. Holding sides of the seat with rigid grip, he readied for lift off––Dylan was clearly going to reassert himself in the most reckless way possible. Instead, there was an awkward clearing of the throat. “Sorry, I’m not used to putting this thing into reverse."
Dylan eased the Mustang onto the unmarked track with painful slowness, clearly expecting the sort of disintegration that had occurred after Beatty. Instead, the car’s grip on the road held as they skirted the edges of the ridge. After a quarter mile a gentle rise, larger bumps and pockets of erosion providing a constant jitter. Dylan gradually accelerated, trusting that the road was well enough maintained to allow coherent progress. A sense of anticipation building with each successive bend. It was not simply imminent reconnection with mystic herb under a star-brushed sky. There was also the prospect of friendship unearthed at its primal foundation––the reestablishing of connections submerged over time in an staccato of jobs, girlfriends, self-inflicted deadlines.
.
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