Learning to Write

Producing a rough draft is creation, in the purest sense. Before the draft exists, it simply doesn’t. Visual artists can’t make that claim. Painters begins with a canvas. Sure it’s blank, but even the size and shape and texture of the canvas serve to inspire, and provide parameters for the finished work. Similarly, sculptors draw inspiration from the stone they have chosen, or from their lump of clay. They enter into their work with pre-existing stuff. Writers start with nothing.

In my imagination, jotting down a draft is the creation of the clay. Editing is the process of sculpting the lump into something beautiful.