I thoroughly enjoyed reading this piece by Anne Lamott, because it acknowledged the struggles that so many of us experience when starting papers. It was reassuring to read about how even professional writers do not create drafts effortlessly. Beginning a paper is undoubtedly the most difficult part for me personally. The concept of the shitty first draft is merely to get words down on paper, and simply doing this makes the writing process far more coherent in the second and final drafts. Although the first draft will likely be close to nonsense, it creates a springboard for new ideas. Drafting is an essential step in the writing process that I formerly viewed as dreadful, but now I can look at it as a way to formulate stronger ideas and make the paper easier to write. Reading this also provided me with a different perspective on the course; writing those papers now seems a little less daunting than before. I enjoyed Lamott's sense of humor and relatability in the reading as well, and the knowledge gained by reading this will help me when writing not only in this course but also in the future.
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...
I agree with you that the article took a lot of pressure off of me to make my first draft perfect!
ReplyDeleteI agree that reading this piece helped me gain a different perspective among the course. I also agree that first drafts are incredibly dreadful but will help relieve stress when writing your paper along the way.
ReplyDeleteI like to think of the first draft as just words down on paper and I do agree it takes much of the stress off when you first start writing, as long as it makes sense to the writer then the second and third drafts should come clean and easily.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree about the reassurance Lamott relayed that even the most professional writers struggle when starting to compose new pieces. I am one that really struggles with starting essays, but the idea of writing multiple drafts seems like a really great idea that i can get behind.
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