After reading Anne Lamott's article "Shitty First Drafts", my previous ideals of turning in a clean, prestige, and polished first draft are over. Lamott shares her own experiences as a writer, along with the frustration and defeat that comes with brainstorming and the lead. Similarly, I and many others share these same feelings. She gives great insight and simplifies first drafts to a T. They are nothing more than the writer's every thought and idea splattered onto the paper, non-organized and messy. Lamott reminds us that it is acceptable to turn in works like these. For almost all of my life, I have had such a concrete mentality of perfection on every occasion--even on first drafts. If I had not polished my draft before turning it in, all I could think of was each mistake that I had made and how I would be critiqued for it. However, Lamott sheds light on common misconception of "perfect" first drafts and encourages writers to lay their ideas on the page, free from repercussions. Overall, I find this article very useful and it has definitely changed my writing techniques and strategies.
Throughout chapter 1 of “The Bedford Book of Genres,” I learned that there are a variety of ways to improve one’s writing. Several writers tend to get carried away while writing that they forget who their audience is and what message they are trying to deliver. This is when one must ask themselves what their purpose of writing is, do they want to present a narrative/ tell a story, inform, or persuade. After figuring out ones purpose they must choose a genre to be able to shorten their idea and be concise. In order for this to occur one must know the basic qualities and agreed-upon rules about the genre they are composing. Once one makes those decisions they move on to the rhetorical situation which mainly explains the idea. This allows the writer to provide support on their purpose such as saying what is great about it or provide statistics, which will automatically make their writing more interesting for the audience to read, as well as, get t...
Like you, I myself mistakenly valued the importance of perfection of the first draft. Instead of just laying my ideas out on the table, I made it harder for myself by attempting to completely edit my original ideas all at once. I too will encourage myself to change my writing techniques.
ReplyDeleteI can relate to formerly striving for perfection in first drafts, and now that I think of it, doing that only makes the editing process more difficult since there is less to work with. I agree that Anne Lamott provided great insight on first drafts, and it has changed my personal writing techniques as well.
ReplyDeleteSimilar to you, I made sure my first drafts were as perfect and polished as possible. This article has also changed my view on first drafts. Making sure the first draft is perfect caused a lot of stress and reduced the amount of time we could have used organizng our writing.
ReplyDeleteI completely relate to dealing with the stress and struggle of turning in a rough draft that I wanted to be perfected and finished so I wouldn't have to fix more in my later drafts. It gave me a lot relief to read this and know that I am not the only one who deals with this, and that a perfect rough draft is never expected. It's good to know that I can just throw unorganized ideas down and it is considered complete.
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