Rough drafts are hard. They require you to essentially word vomit an entire paper out for your first get go. Sometimes people just want to write and get it over with. Submit the paper and never look at it again. This can lead to getting back lots of errors and needed corrections.
They might even just fail the paper. All because they didn’t want to look over their work. Sometimes that is fine. If someone’s writing in a journal or as a hobby, there is no pressure or dead line that they need to worry about. However, creating a rough draft just might be something that will help improve one’s writing.
Noticing & Improvement
In my last post, I focused on how everyone writes with an audience in mind. Regardless of that being for themselves or a specific group. While that is important, with a rough draft, one can help themselves understand what they might need to focus on and adjust accordingly to. For example, when I start writing my screenplays, I will blurt out an entire scene and when I finally feel like I can’t go any farther, I stop. I look back and I’ll pick up on how I word certain things. Sometimes not realizing I accidently used two conflicting tenses in explaining an action.
Sometimes, there will be the case where you’ll go back and rewrite as you’re making your rough draft or paper. In George Dila’s Rethinking The Shitty First Draft, he believes that the rough draft is a waste of time. Essentially, there is no need to make a draft when you can edit as you are typing. I totally understand this way of thinking. For this particular blog post, I’ve gone back and rewrote several words and sentence before reading over it’s entirety. Although, there isn’t anything wrong with that, for me, creating a rough draft to then look over helps me feel way more confident before submitting any kind of paper. In the end, it will always be up to the writer in how they feel they should.
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