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Second Drafts

It's very odd to look at a written piece now and know that it really is a pretty good first draft, but that it really truly needs a second draft rewrite. The skin's too thick there, there's too much Shiny there, the guts are hanging out here, the bone structure could be balanced there....

It's odder yet, now, being able to look at a painting and go... that's a good first try, now, let's get on with the REAL painting...

Reminds me of the times I've been knitting a sweater or a shawl and I suddenly just start ripping the whole thing out and John's watching me, shocked. "It's just not right..." Or when I was writing code for some of Jet's turtles on Minecraft, and I shocked him by deleting a few dozen lines and replacing them with three.

"Oh, that's awesome," he said, looking at it.

What's stranger yet is that, for me at least, it's all becoming the same sort of thing. Make it better, make it stronger, more elegant, more real, or more the type of reality I want to leave behind.

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