“The first draft of anything …”
Vijaykarthik Sathiyamurthy
Technical Editor | Certified Corporate Trainer (Language and Communication Specialist) | Theater Actor, Director, Coach
(On the importance of picking the right metaphor)
"THE first draft of anything," Ernest Hemingway is said to have dismissively remarked, "is sh*t." (His words, not mine.)
A man who won the Nobel prize for his writing must know what he's talking about. Hemingway was a lifelong practitioner and advocate of revising and rewriting text, who ensured that his prose assumed the sharpness and precision of a surgeon's scalpel. Unchallenged master of the mechanics of writing, its craft and literary devices and figures of speech and whatnot, and yet ... !
And yet, he had to pick that as a metaphor for first drafts!
With utmost respect to the genius, I have to politely point out that at least this once, his choice of metaphor is neither apt nor helpful.
Well, what’s the problem
Is it the offensiveness of the metaphor? Not really. Never mind the aesthetically offensive scatological reference. After all, litterateurs and artistes do not necessarily restrict themselves to the aesthetically pleasant among human experiences but are characterized by their ability to turn their gaze even toward the disgusting, when required, and document it in all its raw bibhatsa to make a larger point. So, no, that isn’t the problem.
Is it the attitude, the hubris? Hemingway is said to have made this remark when advising a young, eager, and devoted writer on developing one’s craft of writing. Was he merely being full of himself and stuffing up his own sense of self-importance by talking down to a novice writer? We’re talking about Hemingway here, who was already too well-established as a writer even back then to have any real need to balloon up his self-image in front of a tyro. Even if the utterance of what sounds like a throwaway remark could be attributed to his personality and characteristic style, when it came to providing writing advice, he was indeed being true to his name, earnest. What he had uttered in the lead-up to that contentious line is actually sound advice:
Don’t get discouraged because there’s a lot of mechanical work to writing. There is, and you can’t get out of it. I rewrote the first part of A Farewell to Arms at least fifty times. You’ve got to work it over. The first draft of anything is sh*t.
If it is neither the offensiveness of the material nor his attitude, then what’s the big deal about that remark? What, after all, is the problem?
The problem here is really the yawning gap between what he advises, in earnest, and what his chosen metaphor suggests. In fact, the metaphor directly and fundamentally contradicts the crucial part of his advice, essentially taking away with one hand what the other hand gave.
Why is that metaphor a problem
While his advice is not at all to discard the first draft but instead to keep working on it until it is really shipshape, what does his own metaphor for the first draft urge the writer to do?
“Well, just flush it out without a second thought. Isn’t that all one can do with sh*t?”
That metaphor doesn’t acknowledge any value, doesn’t provide hope, doesn’t open up or identify possibilities, doesn’t point to avenues for improvement, and doesn’t inspire the writer toward purposeful effort. It just dismisses wholesale, without nuance, without discrimination, and offering little scope for redemption.
“The first draft of anything is sh*t, so just flush it out! Why to waste time revising it and rewriting it?” Are you beginning to get my drift?
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Do you see why that metaphor is a problem, despite Hemingway’s unquestionable wisdom and best intentions to help an aspiring writer?
Calling the first draft sh*t is nothing short of indirectly calling for a summary dismissal of the draft, and this flies right in the face of Hemingway exhorting the writer to “work it over.” (“Excuse me, but why should I “work it over” further if it is sh*t anyway?” will indeed constitute a perfectly legitimate response.)
That’s why I hold that this metaphor is both inapt and unhelpful.
What could be a better metaphor
?Now, considering that Hemingway’s intention here is to drive home the importance of not settling for the first draft but to keep working on the writing through multiple drafts until the writing is in its best possible shape, we need a metaphor that performs the following functions:
Are you able to think of a metaphor that will fit the bill? Do let me know in the comments.
Meanwhile, let me share one that I have occasionally used with some of my writing/poetry students, one that checks all those boxes and does more justice to Hemingway’s intent than what his own chosen metaphor does.
Come on, now! Try this on for size:
The first draft of anything … could be … a diamond in the rough!
That’s correct. A diamond in the rough.
To begin with, this metaphor reassures the writer that what they have on hand could be something that potentially has great value. However, because it is still “in the rough,” it needs more work, lots of cutting and polishing and quality testing before it is ready to be in the market, a showcase, or a bride’s necklace. The “diamond in the rough” metaphor gives hope to the writer that the effort that they put in to make their content better will ultimately pay off, and how! Handsomely. By presenting that glittering vision, this metaphor also motivates the writer to bend down at work and not tire until their content too shines and sparkles like a multifaceted gem of superlative value that will be coveted and loved and cherished and protected by anyone and everyone who has the required sensibility to appreciate its worth.
And what’s more, the “diamond in the rough” metaphor also happens to represent the writing process itself very closely in that any and all creativity has an unmistakable aspect of mining materials that lie deeply buried and hidden in the subconscious and have been alchemized into treasurable artifacts.
Do you see how using a different metaphor suddenly opens up a new portal of possibilities, also lending an aura of dignity and glory to the process of revising and rewriting one’s content until it’s really done?
So, from now on, with due apologies to Ernest Hemingway (now, repeat after me):
The first draft of anything could be A DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH.