Wandering a Dark Path, One You’ve Walked Before

On June 24, I posted about the terrifying prospect of writing draft 2.  As usual, I was pretty flipping freaked out.

The update is this:

Second draft, guys.  It’s totally happening.  WOOT.

I’ll be honest, though.  It’s been a slog and I’m only starting to figure out what I’m doing now, six and half weeks later. 

I think one of the reasons second drafts are so terrifying to write is that they’re just less straightforward.  In draft 1, you have one task: write the goddamned thing.  Turn off the perfectionist, self-critical voices in your head and get a shitload of words on paper.  Not that this is easy – it takes ages and it’s a major energy-drain.  But the principle is simple: write a certain amount of words each day, quality be damned, and you’ll come out with a novel.  It’s just true. 

But then the question becomes: What next? What do I do now that I have to turn some of those critical, editorial voices back on? You can’t expect to edit your book if you’ve turned off your inner editor.

For the past six and a half weeks, my writing output has been erratic – some days it’s been pulling teeth to get 100 words, sometimes I’ve clocked in at closer to 500, and if I’m really lucky, I’ve broken 1000.  In first draft-land, writing 2000 words/day was the norm... So yeah, I’ve slowed down.  I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.  But it’s a frustrating thing and it’s made me wonder if I’ve forgotten how to write at all.  [Side note: I wrote this post yesterday… And today was an utter anomaly.  3850! *happy dance* Don’t know where that came from, but it was pretty wild and I can only hope it’s a portent of things to come…]

I’ve mostly convinced myself that my writing’s been all over the place because I’m learning how to take on this next stage.  I’ve had to write more carefully this time ‘round.  In draft 1, it’s okay to let your unconscious take the reins and pull you wherever it wants, but in draft 2, you’ve gotta be more intentional, thoughtful and purposeful.  That takes time.  [NB: The above is my attempt to sound zen about this, but there have definitely been moments where I’ve wanted to lob my laptop at the wall.  I haven’t, because it’s a very pretty laptop, but there’s still time…]

Anyhow.  All this to say, this is new territory and I don’t really know what the hell I’m doing.  I’m sure I can’t be the only writer out there who’s ever struggled at this stage.  I wish I were a bucketful of draft 2 writing advice for anyone who’s ever been in this place.  I’m not.  But, if you have any advice, dear readers, I’d love to hear it!

For the moment, I’m learning.  I hope to be able to dispense wisdom about this part of the writing process some day, but for the moment I have to run into a few walls. 

Apparently that’s how humans learn things. 

What I can do is tell you a bit about what the experience has been like for me.  Who knows? Maybe it’ll mean something to you.

Here goes:

It’s like wandering a dark path, one you’ve walked before:

Your body remembers it – a little.

You brought a map this time, but you forgot your torch. It’s too dark to see without one.  So the map is of little use, beyond what you can conjure of it in your mind.  You have the shape of it, but not the details.

Your eyes are slow to adjust to the dark. In the meantime, you have to rely on your other senses.  You navigate by the smell of the damp, by the feel of branches at your fingertips, by the sweet taste of the air, by the squelch of the mud at your feet.  And you walk into the strangely familiar night.

As you go, you wonder: Was the map you hold in your hands, the one you can’t see – was it ever complete to begin with?  Perhaps there were other pathways you overlooked the first time you wandered here. 

You wander them now.

You get lost all over again.

But each time you get lost, you discover another segment of the map that you didn’t even know was there.

You add to that map in your mind. 

In time, the lines become darker, more accurate.  The territories marked “here be dragons” diminish.  There’s no longer a forest marked on your map when in actual fact there’s a canyon there. 

The more you wander, the more you discover. 

You don’t know as much about the path as you thought you would by now.  But that’s okay – you still know more than you did before and you learn more and more as the hours pass. 

You have faith that your eyes will get used to the dark and that, at some point, the night must end. The skies will become lighter.  And maybe when they do, you’ll scale that cliff that you noticed earlier, silhouetted in the darkness. 

You were afraid of it then.

It won’t be so daunting when the dawn arrives. 

And when you reach the top you’ll be able to look down and see the world that you yourself have created.