Successive Approximation

Just now, my automatic Lichtenbergian Tweet Generator™ offered up this wisdom: “The first iteration is not the finished product.” (That’s from p. 81 of the classic tome Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy.)

Sometimes — rarely, infinitesimally rarely — it is. Sometimes you make a mark, and you’re done. That’s all it needs.

But.

In real life, 99.999% of our creative efforts are not right the first time. We have to fix it. Whether this means editing text or touching up or crumpling up the paper and trying again, we have to keep going until we get it right or we give up.

Not to recognize this Science Fact is to fall victim to the King of Hearts Fallacy. For those of you just joining us, the King of Hearts Fallacy is the (incorrect) idea that an artist creates a new work straight through from beginning to end. We get the term from Alice in Wonderland, where the King of Hearts instructs a witness unsure of how to testify: "Begin at the beginning, go until you reach the end, then stop." That’s not how art works.

Let me broaden that: That’s not how any creative effort works, whether in art or music or gardening or computer programming. Today, for example, I will head down to Backstreet Arts to work with the sign-in database I designed — I’m adding a library catalog lookup component so that our artists can actually find one of the 500 books in the place. (I cataloged them last year, spine labels and everything.)

Once that’s in place, I’ll create a checkout system, maybe even with barcodes, people!

The point is that like every database I’ve ever designed, this one has grown in the telling. Every time Kim asks if she can get some form of data, I add another script or button or layout for her. The library system is just one more add-on.

So if you’re disappointed your piece wasn’t “right” when you created it — good. Fix it.