Reading Anne Lamott’s “Shitty First Drafts” made me unreasonably angry due to the fact that I felt like she was talking down on anyone that used a writing method that wasn’t her own. She discusses how good writers start with really shitty first drafts that are composed of an accumulation of word vomit and thoughts that just stream out of the brain. These really poorly written first drafts aren’t meant to be shown to anyone and they will stay in the pits of despair which means that writers are meant to feel comfortable curating poorly written, nonsensical stuff that looks like a preschooler wrote it. She then goes on to say that second drafts are better than first drafts and they are created by sitting down after the shitty first draft is completed and marking it up with a pen and taking out unnecessary points and wording things in a more correct, appropriate manner. Third drafts are then created from the remnants of the second draft and perfected to be something absolutely amazing. I hate her process, I truly do- I feel like it’s a waste of time and it’s an incredibly extra way to write anything. I may sound like a hater, especially because she claims that most writers use this method, but I think her shitty first draft concept is stupid.
On the other hand, reading George Dila’s “Rethinking the Shitty First Draft” made me feel heard and like I still had a redeemable chance at being a good writer. Much like Dila, I don’t just write a bunch of shitty sentences that accumulate into nothing, instead, I write sentences that I think sound good and I revise them as I go along. I can’t get myself to just throw words onto a page with seemingly no meaning and no kind of common sense behind them- I think I would actually go insane if I did that and I would probably give up writing for the most part. Being able to curate sentences that I think sound good and have meaning behind them then revising them as I continue to write is the only thing that makes sense to me. I revise as I write- I write a paragraph and I read it back, critiquing anything that needs to be changed and rewording phrases that didn’t quite sound right or fit into the tone of the rest of the paragraph. Although I find myself to be on the Lamott hate train, I do think that it is up to writers to determine what writing method they prefer, even if it is Lamott’s and it seems stupid to me. As Dila says at the end of his article, writers have to determine what works for them and what the best way for them to write is.
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