So, it’s back to the drawing board.
My mother might have been an idiom expert. She would use them all the time in everyday conversation. I think many of us, of a certain generation, do just that.
After something went wrong, I would often hear her say. “Well, it’s back to the drawing board then.”
When I was very young, I might wonder where or what this “drawing board” was. Whatever it was, we didn’t have one.
It’s a familiar idiom that is used when a plan hasn’t worked out as expected. It means we must start again from scratch. It carries a sense of disappointment with it, but it suggests not giving up. Time to have a rethink and try again.
Where Did It Come From?
Unlike many older idioms, where the origins are lost in the mists of time, ‘back to the drawing board’ has a surprisingly clear date when it was first used.
It appeared in a 1941 cartoon by the American illustrator Peter Arno in The New Yorker. It showed a cartoon of a crashed aircraft with engineers and officials surveying the wreckage. One of them is seen walking away saying, “Well, back to the drawing board.”
Despite the seriousness of a plane crashing, the humour lay in the understatement. The plane had clearly failed, yet the response was calm and practical. It was time to start over. From there, it entered everyday language and has stayed ever since. It is now regularly used to describe anything that goes wrong.
Why “Drawing Board”?
At the time, architects, engineers, and designers worked at a drawing board. They were large, angled desks where plans were sketched by hand. The drawing board was the birthplace of many ideas. It was where imagination could take over.
The only time I ever used a drawing board was at secondary school, in technical drawing lessons. They were lessons that I actually liked. I think I was reasonably good, as I got a decent grade in the exam.
Do drawing boards still exist? We live in a digital age where it is more likely to be a laptop or PC widescreen monitor now, rather than a wooden board and T-square.
But the meaning remains the same.
More Than Just Failure
What makes this idiom enduring and popular is that it is usually said with optimism of something better to come. It doesn’t mean giving up or disaster. It means try again and get it right next time. And if you need to try again…
“Back to the drawing board” — the first is an acceptance that not every plan succeeds the first time. Inventors, entrepreneurs, business owners, gardeners, and parents — and yes, writers — return to our own “drawing board” at various points in life.
One could argue that progress often depends upon it.
Thomas Edison is frequently quoted.
‘I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.’
Many great achievements came from returning to the starting point, over and over again. Each attempt reveals something new. Each setback refines the idea.
That happens when writing. I go back and change things all the time. Rewrites are sometimes endless. Even then, I’m still often not happy and will start again.
Back to the drawing board.
Perhaps that is why the phrase has endured for over eighty years. It reflects something that we all do from time to time, and that is fail. We just have another go and start again.
Because beginning again is not failure.
Image by Ulrich Dregler from Pixabay
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