Shitty First Drafts

In "Shitty First Drafts]"Lamott discusses how some people perceive writers as gods who are able to sit down and write a successful piece, word for word, in one sitting. She refers to this ability as "the fantasy of the uninitiated." People who have neither the knowledge nor the experience of writing usually believe that writers are powerful enough to write in this way. Authors go through phases where they think their work is inadequate-every time they write. Those who write understand this, but those who don't write could not possibly understand the hardship that writers encounter.

I just love this article because it puts all of my thoughts concerning writing into words. I love putting obnoxiously large run-on sentences in my draft with ridiculous expressions and dialogue, just because I know that I’m able to cut them out later. Sometimes, I even think writing that first draft is the hardest part. I sit down at my desk, stare at my blank Word Document, and think about what to type. I just need to get it down. Have some kind of organized structure and get all the ideas down. Sometimes I even put brackets in the middle of a sentence to remind myself to do something in a later draft. "[REMEMBER TO TALK ABOUT WHY YOU FELT THAT WAY AND GABRIELLE YOU BETTER COME UP WITH SOMETHING WHITTY]." I include everything I want. Sometimes the first draft ends up being more like an essay than an article or a narrative (like what I have been writing all this week), and that’s good. You print your essay out, take a red pen from your drawer, and rearrange everything. It is glorious. The beauty of that first draft is what actually makes me able to write something fairly coherent. What would we all do if we needed to come up with a brilliant piece in one sitting? No editing, no rearranging. Word for word. There would be no writers!! We ALL have those atrocious first drafts that are crumpled up in a landmine somewhere, and we have all prayed that no one ever read them. However, these first drafts guide our process to make our final product as great as it ends up being (we all have that horrible last draft as well…but that’s another blog). I even have a first draft for these blogs. I open Word, write everything down that I am feeling, and then revise and revise (I even went and edited this sentence 5 times). It would be an insult to everyone’s intelligence if I ever let my audience read my first drafts. Terrible first drafts are crucial to good writing. This process also relates to the recent events I went through with my narrative. Last Thursday, all of my friends were going out, but I had to write that shitty first draft (wait…“shitty” is in the dictionary?). I included very repetitive sentence structures, an entire scene that was completely unnecessary, and I didn’t have a single transition. Still, once I finished typing that first draft, I couldn’t help but sit back in my chair and metaphorically “sigh” at my work. It was all down! And that is the most important. I still had hours and hours of editing and revising left to do, but it would all come from that shitty first draft.