Everything Needs a Rough Draft
The first coat of paint is never enough, in writing or life.
You don’t submit a piece of writing after the first draft. You write it and rewrite it and edit it and take it to the Writing Center and show it to a friend and rewrite it again. This is true for any paper I wrote in college. It’s true for every poem I’ve ever submitted. It’s true for every book review and article I’ve written, though my friends don’t see those as much as my editors do. Yet, we expect to get most things right on the first try in our daily lives.
We expect to know on a first date if someone is the person for us. We expect a job we fought hard for to be the one that we will love forever. We expect to get a recipe right on the first try. We know in our hearts that the first pancake is always a dud, that the most famous art took years to make, that nails and walls both need multiple coats of paint. We just don’t act with this knowledge in mind.
Everything needs a rough draft.
The first time I put a toaster waffle in my toaster oven this week, I burnt it to a crisp. I wanted it to be just a little crispier than it was the first go around, so I put it back in. It was inedible. I made another waffle. I tried to build my bedframe by myself and cracked my phone screen protector when the metal frame fell on it. I texted my neighbor asking for help, and we had the bedframe built within ten minutes. The short story I am submitting to my workshop group has been rewritten at least three, maybe four times, and I know it’s not ready for publication any time soon. I know it’s missing something.
Very few of us get things right on the first try. I know that I learn more from the times I make mistakes and have to figure out where I went wrong and what I need to do right than the times I did the right thing the first time. We know when we are learning new things that doing them over and over again helps us remember. We know teaching others is helpful to our own memory, which can often mean admitting you are wrong or don’t know.
Instead of thinking of these moments as times we’ve failed or messed up, let’s think of them as rough drafts. You gave it a go. I made a waffle in a new toaster oven and didn’t know the settings yet, but I learned that one go in the toaster will be enough. Maybe next time, I’ll try a different setting just to see if I can get it crispier. Regardless, I’ll always remember not to run a waffle through the same setting twice if I want to enjoy my breakfast. I don’t want to be right the first time. I want to proudly complete a rough draft and have someone help me figure out what is and isn’t working. I shouldn’t try to balance a six-foot-long piece of metal by myself when I could just ask for help.
We Google things all the time to see if we’re right. We have to admit we are wrong a lot because, in the age of social media, misinformation is everywhere. Why is it so hard to look at each activity and stage of our lives as a rough draft? Small improvements will make a big difference, but we have to be okay with someone pointing out our flaws. We have to be okay trying to do something and realizing for ourselves that it didn’t work and we may or may not know how to do something that will make it work. Next time you want to do something new, do it. Be okay with giving it a go and pausing later to figure out what went awry. As long as you are not causing damage or hurting anyone, you can start your next new thing with a rough draft.
Weekly R.E.P.O.R.T.
Reading: First-Time Caller by B.K. Borison
This is a novel by one of my favorite romance writers that is a retelling of Sleepless in Seattle. It takes place in Baltimore and has two wonderfully intriguing characters who are, of course, going to fall in love eventually.
Eating: Grocery Store Frosted Sugar Cookie from Broma Bakery
This recipe is just slightly different than the one in Sarah Fennel’s cookbook, Sweet Tooth, but it’ll probably still turn out the same. I do recommend buying cake flour because my cookies were much thinner than hers; though, they were still soft.
Playing: Damiano David’s cover of “Nothing Breaks Like a Heart”
Obsessing: Red nail polish.
It’s a little bit of cheer that pretty much always looks good, even when it chips. It also matches most seasons.
Recommending: “Put a thought on paper, tend to it correctly, and it will grow into a better thought.” - James Horton, PhD. from Moonshots, “The Nonwriter’s Guide to Writing A Lot”
Treating: I added Girl Scout cookies to the chocolate stash.
That’s all she wrote…
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