The past two weeks have been just that: an inexplicable whirlwind. A strange combination of me being far too busy and alternately bored, but mostly filled with a desire to get things done that’s really pushing me to actually do just that. For a change!

Firstly, NaNoWriMo was a success. It was fun, it was painful, and it’s over. I can’t wait until next year’s attempt (I have learned, O NaNo, to respect thee and come into November prepared for thine total domination of my mind, ha) but I also, somewhat desperately, want to get back to what I was working on before NaNo took over my life. I recently re-read my draft and got excited about it all over again. I asked my friend to read it over and she’s given me some terrific feedback that’s given new zest to the fire under my butt to get it done. Also, because this is probably, at present, my single most interesting novel, I’m fascinating by the whole creative process — I, by and large, write to discover — but I’m also daunted by all of the things I simply don’t know about this plot yet. I have a vague, overhanging notion of where it’s going, how it will end, what happens to get it there — but it’s vague.

Thus writing to discover’s weak point… the whole vague part can’t really be wholly sharpened until I get there. It’s not that I have so many “things to do” that daunt me. Things are things: tangible, visible things. It’s my lack of certainty, of knowledge, of the plot that’s truly daunting. I hate looking ahead in my imagination and seeing this tangled Black Cloud of the Unknown I now have to plunge into, because while it can be fun, I also do like to have an idea of where I am going as I am getting there. There’s the famous E. L. Doctorow quote, that writing “is like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” That’s true, but I also like to be aware of landmarks on my route to know that I haven’t gone astray from the path that’s leading toward my desired conclusion. Sometimes the journey there has changed that conclusion (it’s happened more than once that while getting there I realized my vague desire was irrational and needed to be changed). Even so, it’s not an entirely comfortable feeling for someone like me, who tries to go into most things in life as completely prepared for all exigencies as possible. I traveled to Europe with lots and lots of guidebook information both with me and in my head and though we didn’t have a lot of hotel reservations, I worked my butt off before hand so I knew I could survive traveling into a city without being prepared with a bed to sleep in that night. Bryan’s confidence in himself and in me helped me a lot, and he’s been helping me get through writing the same way, with the same faith and confidence in me.

I know I have that same faith and confidence in myself, too. It’s somewhat cheeky, my view of my own future success. I know I will do it. I know it with a pure, palpable, ferocious certainty that will not be undermined or driven off course. I am too stubbornly determined to be a success to not succeed. But there are levels of success, there are levels of perfection — or perceived perfection — and it’s hard, so hard, to be able to plunge forward at this early stage in the game and not want what I am producing now to be as polished and perfect as the end result will be.

To that effect, NaNoWriMo’s Chris Baty had some brilliantly simple advice on the site the other day:

Do not spend a single second making your prose readable until you’re absolutely, positively sure that you have your story locked down. This is the single most important bit of advice I have, and I ignore it all the time and have wasted years of my revising life because of it. The impulse to snappy-up dialogue and make sentences eloquent is almost irresistible at every point in the revision process. It makes sense: We’re surrounded by so many big, messy plot and character problems that it’s nice to seek solace in tidying up sentences. It’s a finite task, it’s instantly gratifying, and it makes us feel like we’re making progress on our books. The sadness comes when we spend six months transforming our first three chapters into Pulitzer-worthy gems, only to realize that none of those chapters will actually end up in our novels because they don’t work with the ending. This happens over and over and over, and it will kind of make you want to die. My advice: Think of your second draft as a house that you’re building. You need to pour the foundation, frame the walls, and get a reasonably waterproof roof over your head before you start to think about putting art up on the walls and installing the basement bowling alley and aviary. Let the art-hanging and bird-bringing be the treat you give yourself for all your manual labors with the cement mixer and nail gun.

When I read that, I sort of snorted and said to myself, “Yep, that’s exactly what you do. Exactly.” Reading the first few chapters of my draft, I noticed how tight and well-written they were. I was proud of myself. Then reading through successive chapters, I saw how much looser the prose got, how much more rambly the dialogue became, how vague the scenery was… and I realized, I’ve spent so much time revising that draft, and not plunging forward, that I’m undermining myself. Every time I make the beginning more perfect, the Black Cloud of the Unknown gets thicker, murkier, and less certain of successful navigation, simply because I keep crystalizing what comes before without first determining what comes after. Katherine Patterson said it in her NaNo pep talk, precisely:

I live in Barre, Vermont which calls itself the “Granite Capital of the World.” Outside our town are enormous quarries, so when I speak in local schools every child has a mental picture of a granite quarry. “You know how hard it is to get granite out of the quarry,” I say. “You have to carefully score the rock and put the explosive in to make the great granite block break loose from the face of the stone. Then you have to attach the block to the chains so that the cranes can lift it slowly out of the hole and put it on the waiting truck. That’s the first draft. It’s hard, dangerous work, and when you’ve finished, all you’ve really got is a block of stone. But now you have something now to work on. Now you can take your block down to the shed to carve and polish it and turn it into something of beauty. That’s revision.”

So I suppose it comes down to this: NaNoWriMo taught me that I am capable of ridiculous output. Make that output now a weekly goal of a certain number of words — or actual time spent world building, researching, outlining/plotting, or developing characters — and I can certainly tackle this beast effectively.

Add to that revamped desire my absolute cheeky optimism, brash confidence, and unwavering determination… yep, I can do this.