Shitty First Drafts: Patterns And Weaknesses

Shitty First Drafts Name Institutional Affiliation Shitty First Drafts Lamott’s article not only highlights many of the issues that she has with writing first drafts but also highlights the diverse ways in which different individuals struggle to actually put information down on paper. As Lamott’s mentions, the writing of food reviews was predominantly informed by the experiences at the restaurant. By engaging in this process, Lamott is able to have a solid experience upon which she can make observations and complete her reviews as is needed. I can greatly identify with this, seeing as writing for me is almost always a process based on reading some literature or watching a film or even having a conversation with someone. The problem, however, comes in making critical and informed reflections on the experience, which serve as the foundations and guiding principles of the writing itself. Lamott mentions that her first drafts are typically shitty because she chooses to write about anything and everything that comes to mind with regards to the topic, which makes her first draft a “child’s draft, where you let it all pour out.” In this way, her first drafts are inevitably shitty and, in her own judgment, quite embarrassing. While I do not have the exact same experience, mine is still similar to Lamott’s in some way. When writing first drafts, I have the tendency to drift a great deal insofar as the subject matter of the writing is concerned. It is quite common to observe that I may be writing about, say, the stylistic devices of a literary piece in one paragraph and about its impact on the modern world in the very next, or in some bizarre instances, still...