While reading Anne Lamott’s “shitty first drafts”, I naturally compared her writing process to my own. I’ve actually read this essay in a previous class, so I’ve already adopted Lamott’s rough drafting method. The first thing I think of is my general writing plan and my main ideas. From there, I just write, but I try to keep it organized and structured. Before trying this writing method, I focused too much on making my writing perfect on the first draft. Something Lamott said that really stood out to me was “Very few writers really know what they are doing until they’ve done it”. I relate to this because my main ideas aren’t complete until I’m done writing my first draft. After reading over my rough draft, I find new things I want to focus on instead of my original plan. It surprised me to read that most writers find it hard to start writing something and Lamott referred to it as “pulling teeth”. Most of the time, I don’t like writing and starting an essay can feel unbearable. It was nice to hear that many successful writers feel the same way. While revising future papers, I plan to look for strong points I make to help me find the main points of my essay. I find that I have a lot of ideas jammed into one essay, but that means my rough drafts are filled with strong points to base my essay off of.
It sounds like you have a great plan Jamie! I totally agree that you have a lot of good information in your essay. You could potentially pic just a few of your favorite points and really elaborate on it so the essay stays simple and organized. I look forward to reading your revision!
I found your post very relatable and absolutely understand what you mean about starting papers. Especially first drafts and intro’s. I know you said you have a lot of topics going on in your papers but when I read your first draft, it seemed very organized so I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you! Everything looked awesome!
I thought it was very relatable how you said that you focus on making your first draft perfect. I feel the same way, before reading “Shitty First Drafts” I didn’t think that method of writing was something that a lot of writers use. But Now I know that it is the right way to write a paper, even though I’m probably not good at this style of writing.