Second Drafts...
It's very odd to look at a written piece now and know that it really is a pretty good first draft, but that it really truly needs a second draft rewrite. The skin's too thick there, there's too much Shiny there, the guts are hanging out here, the bone structure could be balanced there....
It's odder yet, now, being able to look at a painting and go... that's a good first try, now, let's get on with the REAL painting...
Reminds me of the times I've been knitting a sweater or a shawl and I suddenly just start ripping the whole thing out and John's watching me, shocked. "It's just not right..." Or when I was writing code for some of Jet's turtles on Minecraft, and I shocked him by deleting a few dozen lines and replacing them with three.
"Oh, that's awesome," he said, looking at it.
What's stranger yet is that, for me at least, it's all becoming the same sort of thing. Make it better, make it stronger, more elegant, more real, or more the type of reality I want to leave behind.
It's odder yet, now, being able to look at a painting and go... that's a good first try, now, let's get on with the REAL painting...
Reminds me of the times I've been knitting a sweater or a shawl and I suddenly just start ripping the whole thing out and John's watching me, shocked. "It's just not right..." Or when I was writing code for some of Jet's turtles on Minecraft, and I shocked him by deleting a few dozen lines and replacing them with three.
"Oh, that's awesome," he said, looking at it.
What's stranger yet is that, for me at least, it's all becoming the same sort of thing. Make it better, make it stronger, more elegant, more real, or more the type of reality I want to leave behind.
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contemplative
And what about those who do seven drafts and are still not satisfied?
There's some that say you should work at creating as if you'll die tomorrow, but to craft what you create as if you'll live forever...dunno...
I'll admit that I do know when something's done, too, and sometimes it changes with the day. Two of the paintings I thought of as first drafts are simply going to get shown as they are because I'm running out of time before the show! Not sure how that goes, but so it is.... One, though, is going to go through another iteration.
Lifetimes, maybe? Maybe our lifetimes are our own second drafts? Who knows?