Anne Lamott and Renee Long express varying opinions on how best a writer should view their own first drafts. However, I think that both of their arguments revolve around similar premises.
The Shitty First Draft
Anne Lamott’s argument, posed in her paper “Shitty First Drafts”, mainly has to do with taking the pressure off of writers who tend to fall into the cycle of perfectionism when writing even their first drafts. Choosing to view your first draft as inherently shitty, and recognizing that the nature of first drafts is to be shitty, allows the writer to relax, forget about making their first draft perfect, and just write. Lamott argues that letting your first draft be shitty and essentially do what it wants to do, and then go back to it later to revise and pull out the good bits, is a sound writing process, and will relieve much stress from the writer.
The Acorn
Alternatively, Renee Long argues in her “Why I Reject the Idea of Shitty First Drafts (And What I Do Instead)” that calling a writer’s first draft “shitty” is disrespectful and does nothing to recognize the hard work, time, and effort the writer put into writing their first draft. She postulates that, instead, writers should choose to view their first drafts as a small, seemingly insignificant acorn that has the potential to grow into a giant, beautiful oak tree. Long believes that it would not make sense for anyone to call an acorn “shitty”, unless the writer really needed the push. She feels that the concept of the “shitty first draft” is harsh in many cases, and does not teach the writer to believe in themselves.
My Opinion
I think that both Lamott and Long’s arguments revolve around the writer’s mental health and self-esteem. It seems to me that Long may have missed the underlying message behind Lamott’s paper. She seems to believe that what Lamott is arguing is that a writer’s first draft will always be shitty and therefore can never become something greater. However, from my understanding of Lamott’s paper, she is more so arguing that writers should not be too hard on themselves, or judge themselves or their writing, based on their first draft because the first draft is not supposed to be perfect. It takes the first draft off of the pedestal that many writers place them on, and normalizes the first draft being far from ‘good writing’. Long seems to be concerned with a similar issue, when she expresses her thoughts on teaching writers to value themselves and their work, and see their first draft as something that may not be the best at the moment, but with some care and attention, can become something truly great.
Personally, I prefer Lamott’s perspective on the issue, as I tend to overthink my writing, and my first drafts never seem to be good enough for me. I have the habit of placing my first draft on a pedestal, that if I fail will mean the end of my life. Choosing, instead, to view my first draft as something that is inherently and naturally always shitty, and that this is a normal occurrence for all writers, takes some weight off my back. Long’s alternative of the “acorn” is still helpful, but it does not do as good a job at relieving me of my stress of wanting my first draft to be amazing every time as Lamott’s paper does.
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