Everything Is Clay: How to Draft and Revise Without Getting Stuck
Staring down a blank page or a work that needs revision doesn’t have to be terrifying.
Sculptors make art out of wood, metal, plastic, or clay. Writers make art out of words, which are basically air, breath, voice. So ephemeral that the blank page can seem insurmountable. So I think of it this way: we have to make our own clay. Sure, sometimes, we sit down and spit out a sestina or a perfect blog post, or a story, or whatever. But most times, we first have to go down to the river and dig up the clay needed to form such things.
What is the clay? First drafts, notes, thoughts, freewrites—all stuff that can be terrifying because it comes out so rough. But we need this rough material, even if it’s soupy or full of stones. That’s okay—we can dig the stones out and structure it into what will become our sculpted piece.
The easiest way to get stuck is to think that everything should come out perfect on the first try. “You just need to write a shitty first draft,” writers often say. But even that does not feel quite right for me: sometimes the pressure to produce something as formal as a “draft” is too much. So instead, I tell myself “you’re just making clay.” And then I start writing, which is also kind of digging to see what’s there.
Then there’s the step where the writer starts to form the clay into something resembling a pot (your essay or poem). It’s still lumpy, and this is okay. Sometimes the top half is a beautiful vase, but the bottom is still mushy clay, with straw poking out. You refine that clay, shape it, and then maybe re-shape the rest the piece to fit it. There might be many attempts where you form it, then crush it down again and make it something else.
Sometimes you start to work and then realize you’ve been trying to make a tiny vase when you actually need to create a giant column. Or maybe a colosseum. You need to make more clay.
I’ve been working on a poetry collection about recovering from sexual violence. The book is mostly done, except I left out so many attempts at short poems. They were small, depressing vases that were somehow also as heavy as medicine balls. Recently, I started using them as clay, collaging them together to form a long poem that spans years, places, and stages in my recovery. The poem wants to go all the way to the now, and so I’m making clay about my current life to add to it. Then I will shape this clay, and shape the rest of the poem around it.
What I like about this way of thinking is that it takes the intimidation not just out of drafting, but revision. The worst part of revision is when we think of it as a kind of evaluation. We started with a beautiful spark of creativity, and then we come back to the poem, essay, or story with the attitude of “is this worthy or is it crap?” Of course that will stop you in your tracks.
Instead, we should come back to our work curious about how we might use this raw material or half-formed pot to enact our vision. So instead of a question of value, there’s a question of craft: how might I shape this?
And if we can’t shape it right now, we might be able to in the future. Even when clay is old, you can add water to it to make it moldable again.
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