The Power of the Messy First Draft
This article is for: Beginner and Intermediate poets
One of the things that can hold new poets back is thinking that your first draft has to be something special.
Of course, we probably all want to create spectacular first drafts, and it’s nice when it happens, but actually, this is not at all necessary.
In fact, a weak first draft can easily become a strong final poem—while actively trying to make your first draft dazzling and complete can put on so much pressure that it blocks you from achieving anything!
So in this article, I want to go over:
How a bad start can lead to a good end—and may even help you get there.
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Bishop’s “One Art”: one rubbish start
In April of 2024, I went to a revision workshop led by Heather Treseler and Anthony Walton. There I saw for the first time some of Elizabeth Bishop’s drafts for her villanelle, “One Art.”
Bishop was one of the major American poets of the last century, and “One Art” is her best known poem—and deservedly so, since it’s a very skilled and polished piece of writing. (If you don’t know it, you can read it here.)
As I cover in this article, the villanelle can be an inflexible form, prone to sounding mechanical and superficial because of its extensive rhyme and multiple repeating lines. Bishop, however, infuses it with subtlety of thought, structure, and feeling.
To begin with, she starts with an arresting idea: “The art of losing isn’t hard to master.” Who knew losing things could be thought of as an art?
Then she follows that up with an even more interesting thought: “so many things seem filled with the intent / to be lost that their loss is no disaster.” Apparently, the objects of the world want us to lose them! (That explains my many missing pens, hats, gloves, and umbrellas over a lifetime....)
After grabbing our attention like this, Bishop then goes through a carefully expanding progression of things one might lose, starting with everyday examples, lke keys and a “lost hour,” then moving outwards to “places, and names,” “three loved houses,” “two cities,” even “a continent.” Thus she expands the idea of losing to something almost philosophical, a concept that encompasses and expresses much of the pain and yearning of living.
And as if that weren’t enough, to finish off she jumps to the most important loss of all: the impending loss of her own lover—“the joking voice, a gesture / I love.” Suddenly we realize that all the clever ideas of the poem were put there not to impress us, but to try to convince the poet herself that losing the one she loves more than anything is no big deal. But in the end she tacitly, and very poignantly, admits that no such self-deceit can work, as she stumbles over the key word “disaster”:
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
So the poem is original, well organized, and moving, all at the same time.
I hope I’ve given you an idea of how accomplished the final version of this poem is—and that’s what everyone knows about “One Art.”
So it is fascinating, as well as reassuring, to see that Bishop’s first draft for “One Art” was pretty awful.
Here is how that first draft begins:
THE ART OF LOSING THINGS
The thing to do is to begin by “mislaying”.
Mostly, one begins by “mislaying”:
keys, reading glasses, fountain pens,
- these are almost too easy to be mentioned,
and “mislaying” means that they usually turn up
in the most obvious place, although when one
is making progress, the places grow more unlikely
- This is by way of introduction. I really
want to introduce myself – I am such a
fantastically good at losing things
I think everyone should profit from my experience.
When I say this draft is “awful,” I’m not saying it has no merit at all.
After all, we can see that the initial idea of “One Art,” losing as an art, is already there. So is the concept of the poem as an instruction in the art of losing, teaching us how to do it.
However, if this were a final draft, we’d have to say that the actual execution of the ideas is weak.
The voice is very prosaic (" they usually turn up / in the most obvious place”), she repeats herself, and she tells us things she ought to be showing (“I really / want to introduce myself,” or, “This is by way of introduction”).
But of course, the point is that this is very much not the final draft. And that means Bishop was approaching it differently.
In this first attempt at exploring the idea of loss, I think we can see that Bishop was allowing herself to include anything that occurred to her, without considering whether or not it was “good.”
And therefore, of course, a lot of it isn’t good! But that’s OK, because:
Bishop was really just trying to find out what she might have to say about this topic.
She gave herself permission to type any old thing, and that gave her the maximum ability to generate material.
Why a rough first draft is a great thing
Bishop’s openness to writing down anything and everything is an extremely wise approach, because:
If you try to elevate and polish your very first draft, you risk choking off a lot of subtle and exciting ideas.
First, by writing down only thoughts that seem “good,” you tell your creative unconscious that it is being judged.
And no one likes being judged!
So instead of sending you everything it’s got, it will start to hold back.
Then it will probably send you only the ideas it thinks you’re going to like most—which is usually the most conventional, ordinary ones. That’s not a recipe for great poetry!
But if you write down everything, it will joyfully send you more, including the little thoughts that seem weird at first but turn out to be the most original.
Second, trying to polish straight away makes you too slow to catch the most subtle ideas.
The best ideas are little whispers at the edge of your mind: They pop up for a brief moment, and then they run and hide, and if you don’t get the down in that first moment, you’ll lose them.
So if you attempt to find exactly the right image or description for every thought that comes, or try to shape them into a form right away, your wildest inspirations will pass you by!
Whereas, if you simply write, and let it be loose, sloppy, and “rubbish,” then you can put our your drag net for everything, and be open to really great things coming!
This seems to be what happened in Bishop’s case. After that unpromising opening, the next section of her first draft actually contains a surprising number of ideas that did make to the final version: losing houses, losing countries, losing continents, and small details of the lover she feared she’d lose too.
So by allowing herself to write badly, Bishop allowed herself to create one of her best poems!
Of course there was still a lot of work to do—she made at least 15 drafts of “One Art” in total. But the beginning set it all up.
As I say, I find this very reassuring—to see such a great poem arrive in such a mess gave me hope! My first drafts tend to look like that opening of hers too—full of dull prose, explaining, and things that go nowhere. But it turns out, that’s OK! Maybe it's even the best way to do it.
Maybe your first drafts look like that too—in which case, you're likely doing good work.
There's a lot to be said for messy and exploratory first drafts. And perhaps one day you’ll even find your own “One Art”!
Next Steps
If you don’t already know the exhilarating power of a loose first draft, here’s how you can experience it!
Gather your preferred writing tools and go to a space where you won’t be disturbed.
Choose something to write about. If you don’t already have an idea, I recommend using something you’ve seen or noticed today.
Write down, as fast as you can. a simple description (i.e. physical, sensory details) of what you observed.
Write each detail as a new sentence, and don’t try to make them flow. Just list them.
Also don’t try to make each sentence fancy: just give the plain facts.
Do put the sentences into lines, like poetry, but don’t fuss about where the lines break.After you’ve done that for maybe 20 lines, add a description of something else your observation makes you think of.
Don’t sweat this—just go for whatever comes to mind first.
Again, make the details clear but not fancy, although put them in lines.When you’ve done that for about 20 lines, add a narrative of an event from your past that somehow connects.
The connection can be as weak or strong as you like!
Again, tell it simply, and in lines.Lastly, add 5-10 lines about any emotional issue that has occupied you recently.
Describe this plainly—don’t elaborate much on the feelings or the issue, but just state them as they are.
When you complete this, you will have a messy first draft.
It will probably have some issues, such as:
Parts of it might not connect with other parts
The description might be too plain to be interesting
There might not be much of an ending.
But you will also have::
A series of ideas that could have the potential to say much more than the first observation suggested
Some connections that might be surprising
An ending that might be a great turn
Ideas you might not have gotten to otherwise!
Now you can fish around in that messy first draft, and see what you want to keep, and what you want to expand.
I hope you find something as exciting at Bishop’s “One Art’! But if you don’t, that’s OK.
