Introduced By Amber Hall
Our theme continues to be ‘(Re)volution’ and for my page this month, I wanted to think about how we can evolve past seeking perfection and start celebrating messiness.
I’m guilty of not doing this. In fact, I find my own perfectionism paralysing at times, particularly when I’m trying to write. It can be difficult to allow ourselves to write ‘badly,’ but the bad first draft is essential. Whenever I find myself getting caught up in this kind of thinking, I’m reminded of Kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery. Here, cracks are highlighted by mixing a lacquer with powdered gold, silver or platinum. The imperfections become the most beautiful part because they reveal an object’s unique history. I think we’re much the same: our perceived ‘flaws’ are usually the most authentic – the most human – thing about us, so why are we so afraid to celebrate them? Why can it be so difficult to allow ourselves some grace and why, when we write, does the pressure to be perfect creep in, sometimes stopping us from getting anywhere at all?
On my Monday Moments page last month, I thought about the ways creatives might engage with new technologies to create a bold new future. One of the main issues with AI and modern technology in general is that it aims to create a frictionless experience. In the digital age, everything is streamlined and efficiency reigns supreme. But it seems to me we’re losing something this way. The value often lies in the messiness of the journey, and in the effort taken to do something. Our reward systems are being rewritten, moving away from long-term payoff to short-term gain. And perhaps that extends to writing: perhaps we’re forgetting how to move past a difficult first chapter or work out the loose threads of an ending. Perhaps we’re even losing the confidence to even get started?
AI technology can be a tool for creativity, but it should never be a substitute for the real thing. We mustn’t lose our ability to go out on a limb and make something new, even if our first draft isn’t the flawless thing we’d like it to be. Write boldly and, yes, badly. That’s how every great story begins.
The pieces I’ve selected for my page this month celebrate messy first drafts and unique journeys, reclaiming imperfection as a powerful – nay, crucial – thing in our lives.
First, Sophie-May Ward-Marchbank reflects on her own writerly relationship with the first draft and reminds us there’s potency in those early pages.
A Short Ode To First Drafts
I had a philosophy I lived by when I first realised I loved writing: that I would never edit or be edited. I had this ardent notion within me that whatever I’d written down was gold: the purest, most truthful essence of anything to come from my mind. I struggled with the thought of tampering with something so essential and believed a heavy hand poking at my work would spoil and sour it, removing what I’d poured into it in my moments of fantasy.
My colleague at the time, one of my earliest poetry sages, tried his hardest to break me out of this habit, born of juvenile overconfidence. He warned me of wild sentences, unhoned and feral, littered with errors, that would discredit me as a writer of worth. Begrudgingly (but ultimately for the best), I swallowed his advice like a pill, and my work is all the better for it. However, I’ve always maintained the first draft is something sacred: a core, backlighting without needing accolade; the piece it would eventually become.
For someone as obsessed with perfection as myself, it seems counterintuitive I should hold a place in my heart for a concept so riddled with imperfections. However, I do think that, while the final edit is a splendour of gilt and shimmer, the first draft is a testament to effort and pursuit: the bricks and mortar without which writing would not exist.
It’s all too easy to see a finished work in a vacuum: untouchable, unchangeable and almost set apart from human hands. When an author’s name is stamped onto a work, it often feels like their name is simultaneously branded too; the very word ‘author’ overshadowing everything – everything that led up to them writing in the first place.
Today, it can seem as though there’s a concentrated effort to cut back on work; to make things smoother, less gritty. Computers fit with the backspace key and AI spewing ready-made works have removed the humanity from authorship. Even if their intentions were gracious, it’s my belief that true authorship exists in the unfiltered as well as, or perhaps even more so, than the final, polished project (the closest one can get to the walls of the writer’s own mind). There’s a reason why, after posthumous fame, readers flock to diaries of their beloved wordsmiths. These unalloyed musings on whatever come to mind are fascinating and genuine, traits we crave in writing that are often lost on the cutting-room floor.
This isn’t to say we should overhaul the editing industry in favour of anarchic freewheeling, but I think now, more than ever, we should start to see the magic contained within first drafts. They’re preserved moments in time where the inspiration seized is tangible proof that growth is attainable and necessary. So keep scribbling on pen and paper, scrapping and retrying. It’s what keeps writing as a living, breathing art form.
© Sophie-May Ward-Marchbank, 2025
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In this poem, Jo Renton reflects on the unique chapters of their life and finds joy in the present.
I’m Getting Old But I’m OK
I can’t believe I’m almost eighty
I’ve joined a special band
those of us who’ve walked through history
And seen many trends diminish and expand.
Childhood pictures of one so ancient
flood into my brain
without strain or pain
if I permit it.
A witch with whiskers on her chin,
a crone with age bent double.
so bony and so thin
The wise woman of the village
curing peasant people
with herbs, potions, poultices and secrets;
and burnt as a witch when
the crops turn brown,
when the barn burns down
or she’s thrown into the ducking stool
to drown.
I shut that book and throw it on my mental fire.
My ninth decade won’t be so dire.
I know there’s no fighting nature.
She will always win.
When we’ve had our fling at life,
when we’ve savoured the final slice
it is then time to pay the price,
and have our last adventure.
The book falls open at the ‘nearly’ bit
I nearly drowned when I was six.
A stranger rescued me
and I didn’t drown.
My mother sent me to say ‘Thank you’
with only half a crown.
Surely it was worth a pound
to have saved me from the sea.
Then I nearly lost my life
as a student in North Wales
While slipping, sliding and slithering
down a snowy mountainside,
and finding a rope, a rock – hands reaching out.
A bad accident denied.
I’m really not sure how,
I’m still here to tell the tale.
There were several nearly patches
that on my psyche have left gashes
of past decisions that I’ve made
When I left instead of stayed.
When good outcomes were delayed
Until I found the way, – again.
But I’m still here and I’m OK
I gently close that book, ‘ere painful memories gather
and from my mental shelf, I choose another.
How to enjoy these final years
And live life to the full,
to squeeze out the last drops of living
Until the pith is dry.
I definitely intend to try.
Falling again for someone’s charms,
and finding solace in his arms
has been a good beginning:
Holidays and days away,
meals in bistros and cafes.
Not too much work and time to play.
I’m getting old but,
for next week next month and for today I’m still OK.
© Jo Renton, 2025
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Finally, Danny Baxter writes about the uniformity of AI, encouraging creatives to persist, collaborate and embrace the uniqueness of their artistic journey.
Not Generated By AI
Slickness. That’s what many are looking for in terms of what Artificial Intelligence (AI) can provide, and quickly. For perfectionists, AI feeds into their incessant need for things to be just right.
However, AI has the capacity to correct more than drafting errors. It can correct thinking errors. In fact, it can remove the process of thinking entirely. That’s where we get into provocative ground when dealing with the creative arts.
Outside of the issue regarding where and from whom AI sources its references, there’s the additional concern that over-reliance on its assistance may bias the pursuit of slickness and professionalism towards the mundanity of uniform pathways producing work that lacks originality.
The organic way of working allows the artist and writer to embrace the imperfections, distractions and limitations of the process and media they make use of to create their work. This is a celebration of the unique variations within nature and a platforming of the individual fingerprint of the artist, from which we derive the scarcity and corresponding value of the work.
This topic has me thinking about my own method of working recently, and how collaboration with other artists introduces an additional layer of organic variation to the process.
In the current project I have been working on, I’ve devised a plan and a route of travel for a series of collaborations I desired to co-produce with a number of different (mostly) local writers and artists.
As soon as the project landed in their hands, I had to concede to sharing control of the progress with others. This has changed the project in unpredictable ways. Even as I’ve asked some writers and artists to create work from the same prompt (The Barking Revival), the variation of what they’ve produced is as different as they are. That’s configured further by their circumstances at the time I approached them.
Some results have been as expected, some unexpected. Others have required revisions to my plans. This constantly transforms the vision of what the project can become.
Now AI can simulate a synthetic version of this if it’s fed with enough information. However, it wouldn’t be exhibiting real relationships, nor actual interactions, working under real conditions. I feel this is the value that’s missing in its work. Art isn’t just a product that fits a brief: it’s a commentary on the history of the process, the materials and people that brought it into being. And if we’re constantly making up imaginary narratives with synthetic processes, then essentially our art doesn’t reflect an authentic connection in the real world.
I know, when I look back on my finished project, it will serve as a tribute to the people, places, challenges and achievements that went into its creation, as well as fulfilling its primary purpose of showcasing the topic it was devised to explore. AI synthesis of this experience cannot compare to the real thing.
© Danny Baxter, 2025
Connect with Danny on Instagram: @Dan_LBBD.
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Issue 26, featuring Patrick Vernon, OBE is out now. You will find it in libraries and other outlets. Alternatively, all current and previous editions can be found on our magazines page here.
You can hear great new ideas, creative work and writing tips on Write On! Audio. Find us on all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Google Podcasts and Spotify. Type Pen to Print into your browser and look for our logo, or find us on Podcasters.Spotify.com.
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