First Draft
In school, they would always say, “Do a rough draft first.” I heard that with every large assignment given to me, but never made it go from thought to action. Time and again, I would find myself staying up late, squeezing out words and art pieces, cramming for tests and finals. This worked well enough. I made it through high school and college with that expensive piece of paper called a diploma. But it wasn’t until the end of this past school year when I realized the critical role first drafts will play in my life, even beyond school assignments.
I was hit with this lesson after a year of intensely and tirelessly making art while getting critiqued every week. I started the year with an idea and, like clay is wedged to get air bubbles out, or dough is kneaded to be fully prepared for baking, that idea was continually shaped, rolled, reformed, flattened, and pressed to become refined. After a while, making art seemed to simply be redoing the last project I created. Slightly exhausting, this constant push and pull with my original idea was where the art became something worth spending my time with.
It’s hard. You have the desire to start something after a lightbulb moment where your idea makes perfect sense. That idea, however, is in the clarity of your own head. It must make it through the treacherous translation to reality, and, spoiler alert, it won’t make it through the first time.
That original journey, though, still reveals more than what you first saw. Maybe the rough terrain peeled back a few layers to show you the true essence of the lightbulb moment. Because ideas, like ourselves, are disguised at first. And so, we have to go at it again. And again. Do it again. Sometimes it will be drastically different, sometimes with only a minor change. Sometimes the idea is new, sometimes you just have to alter the route.
It has been said that the definition of insanity lies in repeating an action over and over, expecting the same outcome. In school, I thought my first drafts contained all my brain had on a topic. I thought I gave it my all in the first punch and editing anything would just be repeating an action to get the same result. There is a line, though, between insanity and going back to a faulty first draft.
In life, we tend to expect the constructed image of our futures to work out. Plans, however, have their way of pulling us all over the place, like my dog when he sees another creature, dragging me from his leash, away from the nicely paved suburb sidewalks. Life will drag us through the ups and downs, and when we come to our senses, it’s time to reevaluate. Refine the idea, find it’s core, boil the disguise down to the bones. And then go again.
Boiling down the excess and finding our bones will start a regrowth process. That’s what nature teaches us after a forest fire and that’s what our skin does after scraping our knee on the sidewalk. It takes a first draft to get there. It takes the first draft and all other renditions to form all of the layers that go into life.
It will feel insane, but don’t drop that first draft. Follow it, process it. Label it ‘Layer 1’ and don’t fear the unknown that is to come.