About Writing. Steno & Procrastination
- Karina
- Jan 2
- 4 min read
Day 2. Friday 2 January 2026
It’s a holiday in Scotland today. I’m in Scotland. However, I may be embracing and loving sitting-by-the-fire-and-eating-snacks time a little too much. I had thought I’d be head-down in editing by now, but I am at least writing this and thinking about a very comprehensive editing schedule (hmm).
During these quiet days, ie while I’m trying to convince myself I’m doing work that will progress my novel, I can write some background information, a bit about my writing history and what I’m doing now.
I was a stenographer for twenty-odd years. I’m not going to give a lengthy explanation of my various skills and experiences, but to most people that job just means I can “type fast” (it’s not typing) and “no, I do not do voice recognition” and “yes, voice recognition software is slowly starting to take jobs away from us”, but “a real person taking a verbatim record is better than voice recognition for so many reasons”. Anyway, I could easily go off on one about stenography.
Anyway, unsurprisingly, I have a Stenograph machine (we all call it a steno and use steno as a verb). Stenograph is the company that makes stenotype machines. I can steno pretty much as fast as you can speak. I can type quite fast too, roughly 80wpm. But I can steno at, I don’t know, maybe 220wpm, and some [expletive] people somehow manage to speak even faster than that, which is very annoying and one of many challenges of the job.
Now that I’m not stenoing for work much, my only steno practice is stenoing my novels (I’ve stenoed the last four, along with at least two full rewrites/restenoes). Handwriting, typing, steno and voice are the main means of recording words, going from slowest to fastest. I have written/spoken all forms to write my novels. I documented most of my second novel by speaking into a handheld tape recorder (I had my reasons for using a tape recorder; it wasn’t an affectation) so I could then steno it; a lot of that novel was based on interviews with (fictional) people. It probably sounded authentic as speech but when it came to editing, I could see why speech in novels is not presented how we actually speak; too many erms and reduced likelihood of eloquence and wit. To a slightly lesser extent, the same applies to stenoing.
As a result of using those four means of writing, I have realised that my best first draft would likely be handwritten because I think more about the words I choose and don’t want to tire my hands out with long-winded sentences. I chose to skip handwriting and typing to do my first drafts in steno because I see it as a means of ‘getting it down’. A stenoed first draft needs significantly more work than a typed first draft, but it means a first draft is written significantly quicker, which then means I have something to work with. It also means my first draft and my finished manuscript are probably more different than had I handwritten or typed the first draft. But it’s so, so true that having something to work on, however rough, is better than procrastinating AKA thinking about the story that’s in your head.
With Crime Writing for Beginners, my bash-it-out first draft took about a month. I read it all the way through, wrote copious notes, realised there were a lot of inconsistencies, thought about how to make it better, and then I stenoed it again from scratch. That also took about a month. That is the version I’m currently (thinking about) working on. I have read through it once and taken handwritten notes listing what happens in each chapter. In red pen I have written errors or ideas for how to make it better, ie things to action when going through it again.
That took me a few weeks to do. I then read through it all again and dealt with the more straightforward red pen comments, ranging from corrections (eg my character Sadie’s two Dobermans, Squid and Norma, go with her to the first Crime Writing for Beginners class. In a subsequent chapter, there is reference to her partner Ab taking Squid and Norma to the pub after the class – an easily corrected error) to backstories that need working on to ensure consistency, which requires more attention, and which I haven’t yet done.
I have also done a few steno brain-dumps where I sit with my steno and laptop and just write what comes to mind. I have discovered this works really well for me when it comes to backstories because I can kind of work things through. It is quick and easy for me to think and steno at the same time. I very, very rarely need to read through those kinds of documents afterwards as I work through ideas in realtime and then have in mind the back story, in the same way you’d have a conversation with a friend, say, about something that happened; you ask questions or whatever and then you understand the story. Once you know it, you, erm, know it. So just stenoing ideas like that and asking myself questions reveals to me certain stories. I’ve written a lot of steno notes on the circumstances surrounding the death in my story and where all the main characters were when it happened. It’s amazing how many irregularities I’ve discovered, which have in turn required me to figure out backstories of backstories of backstories …
Today’s photo is sunset from the front garden. I had started writing this but got distracted by the full moon so went outside, and then got distracted by the sunset, then saw this file on my laptop through the window and realised I was procrastinating. So, this is a procrastination photo, a theme that I suspect will be recurring.
Comments