The Fredösphere

My wanderings through the wide world took me to an interview with a designer who mentioned one of "the rules" as though he were speaking of something everyone knows:  you discard your first idea.

What?!  Madness.  It reminds me of a rule from my standardized test taking days.  One of the tips they give you is to go with your first idea for the answer of a question.  Change it only if you recall a specific reason for believing your first idea was mistaken.  In other words, if you have a moment where you say to yourself:

Milton Berle?  No, wait, he was that comedian on TV.  The American painter who steered the middle course between Social Realism and Abstract Expressionism was Milton Avery

then by all means carefully erase that oval you made with your no. 2 pencil and change your answer to Milton Avery.  If all you feel is a vague uneasiness, a reluctance to commit to your answer, then what you are doing is indulging in destructive second guessing.

I believe creating art is similar.  Reject the first idea only if it is plainly defective.  Be wary of peevishness; be reluctant to open the door to the second idea.  The danger:  a third, fourth, fifth, sixth ... twentieth idea will come rushing in right behind it, and you'll waste time and frustrate yourself trying to decide among them.