#2 - Shitty First Drafts

I really enjoyed reading this article from Anne Lamott. I definitely understand her struggle with writing a first draft. It took me time to get this blog post going in the first place. When she talks about how almost every single writer forces themselves to write instead of volunteering to happily write, it nearly makes me content with my forever-shrinking motivation to write anything longer than a tweet. It's quite nice to hear from a writer that putting words down is just as difficult for them as it is for me.

The one part of her article that stood out to me the most was her reasoning and process for a first draft. Comparing it to an uncontrolled child put drafts into perspective. You have to let your writing do whatever it wants first, so then you can change it and improve it later. It's much easier to change something you've already wrote than to start from scratch. Lamott talked about how she could get a sentence or two from a 6 page draft that she really likes and use it to guide her writing in the next draft. She wouldn't have gotten those sentences if she never made it through those 6 pages.

Overall, I find this article very motivating and helpful to me in regards to my own first drafts. Knowing other people are going through the same literary struggles I am helps assure me that I can complete my papers and be happy with them.