The idea of Shitty First Drafts by Anne Lamott is not a new idea to me. Lamott suggests that in order to get that almost perfect rough draft, you must have a “shitty” one at first. She describes it as letting your inner child out on the paper without revision or judgment. This concept sounds a lot like a therapy practice called writing stream of consciousness, and if you’ve been writing for a while, then you probably know what this is. Writing as a stream of consciousness means to write for a period of time (which could be timed or up to you) without judgment, stopping, or a specific goal. Just like Lamott said, just write. I don’t think this is really her or Hemingway’s original idea, but nonetheless, I agree with it. I don’t think you have to write two first drafts just to get to that last one, but I agree that the first one should be whatever word vomit your brain comes up with.
The second article I read, Rethinking the First Draft by George Dila, was a bit unnecessary to me. Instead of giving many alternatives, it mainly talked about disagreeing with Lamott’s sentiment. Dilas way of writing is constantly revising as he goes, but I feel like when you do that, you postpone all the great ideas that would come up if you just kept writing. I feel like at that point you’d be focusing more on how the writing looks than its passion. I think most people, like myself, relate to more of Lamott’s views than Dila’s. If I followed Dila, I think it would be very easy to become a perfectionist.
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