I’ve always associated the shitty first draft with elementary school. My teacher pushed for us to pour our thoughts out on one or two sheets of paper; no thinking about grammar or run on sentences, it was only a draft meant for peer review. Had no mistakes? Make some! She was the type of teacher who had an extremely vivid view on our assignments. We weren’t allowed to have a “perfect” draft, it needed mistakes. I think she felt a bit intimidated by the idea of a third grader understand proper essay format. Sometimes I take the time to think back to that time in my life and ask “Why?” I understand having an outline, hell—I use outlines in some of my personal work today, but the idea of NEEDING a shitty first draft to effectively write a paper is kind of stupid to me.
I don’t allow myself to write shitty first drafts. Instead, I just find myself rewriting whatever I have down until I feel it’s right. This doesn’t work for everyone, obviously, but it’s helped me in both academic and creative writing. I guess this counts as a first draft, but I just do all my editing in my original doc.
People who write shitty first drafts don’t automatically make them great writers. I feel like I kind of relate to George Dila in a way. I refuse to allow myself to write shitty drafts, I have too much pride in my work and would hate to slap such a shitty term on something I’ve worked on. I think of my work like my children, in a way.
Would you insult your children? I think not. To the edgelord who’s gonna read this, disagreeing doesn’t make you interesting or cool. It just shows you lack self-respect, the same respect I feel people should have for a lot of the things they do, especially their writing.
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