The Concept of the First Draft

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Rethinking the Shitty First Draft by George Dila

Dila, in this article, goes on to describe what is a “shitty” first draft. Dila makes a direct reference to Anne Lamott’s article and challenges it. Lamott argues that all first drafts will turn out terrible because it is essentially “word vomit”. It is getting all of your ideas out and slapping it onto paper, the first draft will never make full and proper sense because it is in its first stage. Dila argues against this because they believe that first drafts can be “perfect” or at least well written. That chaotic writing is not everyone’s style. On this, I can personally understand. All writers have different styles or writing and different ways of writing, though some similarities might overlap. Using myself as an example. I like to organize my writing first, break it down into chunks to gather my ideas better. But by no means is my writing perfect on the first draft. 

Shitty First Drafts by Anne Lamott

Lamott talks about the concept of first drafts, that they never will be “perfect” or at least won’t be most of the time. The first draft can be seen as a safe space to dump everything since no one would see it. The first draft is a person’s writing in its rawest form, which would most likely contain a lot of mistakes or various ideas jumbled into a page. This makes sense to me, because not everyone’s first draft would be near perfect. Though, I also have to take into consideration how people write, not just myself. 


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