Marble and Clay
Lessons From Art School
Welcome to this year of our Lorde 2023, the third year in which Shelf Life exists. Everyone I know in my personal life has, by this time, told me they can’t believe I stuck with something this long, except for my friend Kat who, when once told someone didn’t think I was going to do something I said I would do, queried: “Have they ever met you?” Clearly, Kat is the only person I know who knows me back.
A very large part of life is just showing up for stuff. I have found all I have to do is show up to write Shelf Life twice a week to keep it going. The writing doesn’t have to be good or inspired. In fact, it mostly isn’t. It just has to exist.
Today I’m going to tell you about the most important lesson I learned in art school and then, in more depth and detail, about some other lesson I learned in art school.
I have mostly stopped telling people I went to art school because when I do they say, “Oh I didn’t know you were artistic” to which I always reply: “Oh I’m not.” Then we have to have a whole back-and-forth argument about how they’re sure I really am artistic and just being modest, while I insist I have never been modest for a single second in my whole life and I’m not artistic at all, at least not artistic in the way of visual arts.
This is the most important life lesson I learned in art school: That I am not artistically inclined. Like, I tried really moderately somewhat hard but was not any good. That lesson is only important to me, though. It’s not important to you. Except perhaps insofar as there’s no shame in admitting you’re not good at something. Do I look like someone who experiences shame? No I do not.
Fortunately, my time in art school was not wasted because it was an arts magnet high school and I had to be in high school anyway, for one thing, and then for another I did learn a handful of lessons here and there that have applications for other than stuff like painting and printmaking and sculpting et cetera. Like color theory, which helps with choosing outfits and putting on makeup.
So the other thing I learned there is there’s two main ways to make a sculpture. You either:
Start with something and add stuff to it till you have what you want; or
Start with something and take stuff away from it till you have what you want.
This is a Shelf Life about drafting and revising, by the way.
When you sculpt from something like marble or granite, you start with a block and then you chip and cut away parts of it—big parts at first, then smaller and smaller and finer and finer parts as you go—until what is left of the original block is the shape you want.
With clay, you start with a lump in the general shape that you want and then you add more clay to the parts that need it until you get closer to the shape you want. You add clay, mold the clay you added, and then sometimes remove or cut away excess clay, until you get to the shape you want.
I hope this makes sense. I have never been able to make a sculpture look like I want it to. Sculpture class was, in my opinion, one of the hardest ones to fake my way through. I don’t know why. Sometimes I can make a manuscript look like I want it to. I generally do this by using one of the above two techniques.
Some people do a nice, clean, usable first draft. I’m sure they still need to do some revision and polish but some people write a first draft that looks like my third or fourth draft.
I’m always in here saying, “The first draft will always be trash! It’s supposed to be trash!” and this is true for many or most writers. But I am not trying to gaslight those who genuinely draft with great polish and care. It’s just that those folks are very few and far between and what’s more common is that people bang out a garbage first draft that could become amazing with revision, but don’t revise because they think their garbage draft is the best they can do. It almost never is.
Most of us are going to have to revise. All of us could benefit from revision—or, our manuscripts could—but not all of us need revision. Some draft clean enough to go right to editing. Especially with lots of practice writing complete, salable manuscripts. If you think that’s you you probably don’t read Shelf Life anyway so I shan’t belabor this point.
Draft and revise, draft and revise—goes together like a burger and fries. You have to do both. If you don’t draft, you have nothing to revise, obviously. If you don’t revise, your draft is highly likely to go nowhere. You will have a hard time finding buyers, unless you’re writing in a super-niche specialty where the fanbase can’t get enough content to satisfy them, like dinosaur-and-human romance novels, which are a thing.
We’ll take it on faith that you’ll have to revise. There are two paths to a finished manuscript—well, infinite paths that fall under two broad headings, I should say—like there are two paths to a finished sculpture:
Rough in your plot and story in the draft and then, in revision, add in the details that flesh out the manuscript, like round characterization, foreshadowing, descriptions, and so on.
Dump absolutely everything from your brain into the draft and then, in revision, take a machete first and a scalpel second and remove all that does not serve.
It is likely that one method or the other will come easier to you. First, though, I want to say for the record that any revision is likely to contain some elements from both. Even if you’re mainly using method 1, you’ll surely find something to remove. Even if you’re using method 2, you’ll surely find something to add.
If you’re a natural (or a trained) editor and editing comes easier to you than writing, you might find method 2 suits you better because in that style of revision you’re using your editing skills to fine-tune the text. If you’re a natural writer and you find writing comes easier to you than editing, then you may find method 1 suits you best because it’s revision through writing more, not through taking away.
Why, if you’re a natural writer, not just write everything from your brain on the first go but then not have to take anything away? Why do a revision at all? Most of us—the vast majority of us—can’t get it 100 percent right on the first try, or even 90 percent right. Most of us—I think I am not overstating this here, having myself read a lot of my own drafts and a tremendous number of others’ drafts in my career—upon re-reading our draft will find that we missed adding details that are needed, or that our dialogue or exposition go overboard and need to be cut back, or that we neglected to introduce at the start a character we needed in the third act so this person just appears out of nowhere at the end of the story.
It’s easy to overlook these kinds of details when drafting. I would go so far as to say you should overlook and let go these types of details while drafting, because you don’t want to get hung up on this stuff while you’re writing. Don’t slow yourself down trying to make the first draft perfect or you may find you never get that first draft done—which is where most writers get stuck. A lot more people begin drafts of a novel than complete drafts of a novel.
Incidentally, a lot more people also begin sculptures than complete sculptures. I know you’ve noticed how many classical sculptors left the arms unfinished. I’m just kidding, that’s not why all the Greco-Roman statuary is missing arms. Why those sculptures don’t have arms and do have fig leaves is another thing I learned in art school.
The moral of today’s story is: You don’t have to include everything your story needs on the first draft. You can add more, and more, and more to it during revision, like a sculptor adding clay. Further, you don’t need to write a tight and concise first draft. You can chisel away what you don’t need during revision, like a sculptor bringing a face out of a marble block. The only first draft that can’t be improved during revision is the one you never wrote.
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