Every art piece starts with an idea. There’s usually a gathering of materials, some excited muttering, and a vague plan for execution formed. Then the artist will sit down in front of their blank canvas, fingers buzzing with potential, maybe even inspiration. Getting started on something new is the most fun a creative can have. This is quickly followed up by the hardest thing in the world: finishing. 

Whether a piece gets finished is often determined by how the artist starts. Take drawing as an example: if an artist starts with their hardest pencil, making bold, dark lines, I question if they’ll finish. Those lines are very difficult to alter once they’re in place and, even if they have a good eraser, the faint remnants of their original error will linger on the paper. This leads to working around the lines they already have, trying to make it work. With each error comes more effort, until the piece requires more than the artist can give. It ends up banished to a corner of their studio to gather dust. 

If instead the artist starts with a soft pencil, using light, broad strokes, I’ll look forward to the finished piece. They will build up their composition slowly, able to alter as necessary with few issues due to their light hand, fixing what needs to be fixed before it’s set in stone. It’s less effort to fix a sketch than it is a dark line and, should the piece not take shape the way the artist thought, it can be pitched or restarted with little effort wasted.

This slow, building process is an essential part of all art-making. Rembrandt didn’t just sit down in front of his subject and start slapping paint on the canvas. There were sketches, color studies, composition blocks. Many people don’t know that because no one sees it. I’ve seen self-taught artists grow incredibly frustrated with the fact that they cannot pick up a paintbrush and magically know the exact right composition and colors as they paint. I’ve seen photographers take a single picture and go “This isn’t working” without bothering to move around, try different angles, or rearrange the shot. 

Self-taught writers do this a lot. 

This isn’t entirely our fault. Writing, much like art, is not seen as a valid career choice (hurrah for the devaluation of culture!), so many people pursue it in their off-time, rarely taking structured classes to improve. We pull on the few things we know from high school or the Intro to English class in college. Write the first draft, do an edit for grammar and coherence, turn it in. Done. So why wouldn’t you assume that’s how all writing gets done? Clearly, Hemingway was just Good at Writing. If I am also Good at Writing and I finish the first draft of my book, all it needs is an editor and an agent, right? Someone call the publishers, we’ve got the next Great Expectations over here. 

Yeah, no. 

Writing, like any other art, requires the sketching phase. So so so many of us write as if we held the hardest pencil or, God forbid, a pen. It’s what leads to those “Works-In-Progress” I know you have on your computer with 25-50k words written that have been abandoned (am I calling myself out here? Yes. Do I like this any more than you? No.) To write well we have to throw away the notion that our first draft is our only draft. Release your first draft from all expectations. Let the words be soft pencil, able to be erased or manipulated until you can see what the structure of the work looks like. This process, like in the visual arts, makes it much easier to write the first draft. It releases you from having to do a good job on your first go. Instead of worrying about voice and tense and grammar, you can focus on feeling your way through the work. What’s important will stick out once you’re done. 

When you finish your first draft, it’s vital that you step away for a while. Throw the manuscript somewhere you can’t access it for at least a week, maybe even a month or two. Go outside, touch some grass. Spend time with family and friends. Take a vacation. You’ll need some time to relax before you pull that manuscript out and begin the next stage. It’s where you start drawing over the soft sketch with a darker pencil: the rewrite.

You heard me. The rewrite. 

Staring at your 80k+ word manuscript and being told to rewrite it can feel like cruel and unusual punishment. But as you start to read it, red pen or mouse cursor for annotations in hand, you’ll start noticing things. Taking notes. Finding ways to fix a weird part here or change a character’s dialogue there. As you take notes, you’ll see the structure, themes, and ideas that your work is trying to get across and find ways to make it smoother, more coherent. At the end of this editing phase, you’ll be exhausted and intimidated by the work ahead of you, but you’ll be done with your sketch. You can move to the next pencil up. 

The rewrite will be hard. If I’m being completely honest here, I’m on my third rewrite of this frickin’ post, and no, it doesn’t get any easier. With each draft and each edit, your work does get better. You’ll look back at the sketch once you’re on your fourth draft and go, “Whew am I glad I didn’t try to publish that garbage.”

After your initial rewrite, you should have a lot less to edit when you come back to it for the third go. This is where you edit grammar, sentence structure, and polish the words until they shine. Think of it as adding the details to the drawing, the shine of someone’s eye or the lace on a dress. Somewhere, between these stages, you should get someone else’s eyes on your work. If you stare at the same thing every day for months you’re bound to miss something, something that may be obvious to any outside observer. Your draft readers should be people you trust and respect; take their input kindly. 

Rewrite and edits can go ad infinitum if you let them. Many artists get hung up with the play of light on an object or a color they can’t seem to get quite right. In this instance, it’s a good idea to learn when to step away and when to call something done. Practice accepting a work as Good Enough instead of the Perfect you’re striving for. This takes time, and, frankly, deadlines to force you to submit something, even if you’re not entirely happy with it. Sometimes it’s an outside influence that convinces you to stop, like a partner saying, “Cyndy, step away from the computer.” (Love you, dear). A piece can only take so much fiddling- if you’re on your sixth draft, it may be time to let it go. 

Releasing yourself from the shackles of the first draft can be tough. After all, finishing any creative venture is an accomplishment, let alone one that takes weeks or months to complete. Yet all art forms have a process, and many of them translate across mediums, whether we like it or not. Embrace the trash-fire first draft. Let it be awful. After all, a sketch is never perfect- just good enough to get started.