The first draft is never the last! | We must return to our creation every day without excuse!! ❤️

Fail Better | Why Your First Draft Shouldn’t Be Perfect

Yesterday, during the Alumnus Talk for our I MA & II MA English literature classes, Mr. Lakshmi Narayan had given the students three beautiful rubrics on how to kickstart one’s creative writing schedule in a consistent manner.

He had remarked, 

“We have become consumers of content, not makers of it. Making is messy, like giving birth. The first draft is never the last, even on the days it is”.

This was such a beautiful insight, especially the second part -

‘The first draft is never the last…’

In this regard, I would like to give us all a few vignettes from a lovely book titled, How to Fly a Horse: The Secret History of Creation, Invention and Discovery, by Kevin Ashton, published in the year 2015.

Remember Kevin Ashton? The guy who had famously coined the expression “Internet of Things” in the year 1999.

In 2013, his phrase “Internet of Things” was added to the Oxford Dictionaries, which defined it as “a proposed development of the Internet in which everyday objects have network connectivity, allowing them to send and receive data.”

While discussing his mind-blowing achievements, Kevin highlights the importance of failure and failing better every time!

Says Kevin -

I learned to succeed by learning to fail. I learned to expect conflict. I learned not to be surprised by adversity but to prepare for it. Creating is not magic but work.

Judah Folkman’s observation that “innovation is a series of repetitive failures” applies to every field of creation and every creator. Nothing good is created the first time. 

Writer Linda Rubright’s definition of “Iterative Process” is “Total fail. Repeat.”

Creators must be willing to fail and repeat until they find the step that arrives. 

Samuel Beckett said it best: “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

Failure is not wasteful but useful. Time spent failing is time spent well. Wandering creation’s maze is never a waste of time. Only leaving it is.

There comes a point in every creative life, no matter what the discipline, when success depends upon committing completely. The commitment has a high price: we must devote ourselves almost entirely to our creative goal. We must say no to distraction when we want to say yes. We must work when we do not know what to do. 

We must return to our creation every day without excuse. We must continue when we fail,

says Kevin Ashton.

Trueproves to a tee, what Mr. Lashmi Narayan told us yesterday about the creative writing process –

The first draft is never the last!!!

PS: You may want to read about Osho’s take on Creativity on our past post HERE