Throughout Anne Lamott’s writing, she goes on to explain how first drafts are completely “incoherent, hideous” and most notably “shitty.” She admits herself that professional writers “often sit at their desks in despair, with fear in their eyes, hoping that God will somehow send them a message that will help them write their next story.” However, feelings of fear that is often felt during a writer’s first attempt to start a writing that has been labeled as a well written writing is exactly what is needed in order to write to their full potential and have a good writing. As far as a second draft, In order have a successful second draft, successful writers often throw random thoughts on paper and anything that comes to mind about that specific topic. Lamott, she believes that the first draft is always labeled as the “child’s draft,” which is basically where you let all of your thoughts spill out on the paper, because no one is going to see the draft, so why does it matter about what is on it, except all of your thoughts? After going back and revising the first draft, the next step is to always begin form and make whatever changes needed to write based off of those revisions. The third draft often requires to focus on the purpose of the writing while keeping the audience into consideration to keep them fully engaged in the writing. Oftentimes, writing a draft that seems to be all over the place with a million different thoughts, ends up in a fantastic writing because there are different ideas and thoughts that can be put into better terms on the final draft. Lamott goes on to talk about how writers sometimes have horrible starts to their first drafts because it may be hard for people to fully get their ideas down on paper. Lamott believes that no writer “sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts.
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