As you can tell from the title, writing drafts can be a tiresome task even with certain methods to support us through the process. However, some people like Anne Lamott presume that the best way to make it through the steps of writing, we must first pour out all of our ideas onto the paper and reshaping it all later, she explains more about this in her article, “Shitty First Drafts”. Other individuals such as George Dila believe otherwise; in fact, his “Rethinking the Shitty First Drafts” article responds to Anne Lamott’s article and describes his alternative way of thinking through the writing process. Well, who is right about this? The correct answer would be both of them.
When I say this, I don’t mean that both of the methods presented by these two professionals are definite; I believe there are a multitude of ways to interpret a good writing process. The way I see it, everyone has their own version of a good writing process and all of them are effective; it just solely depends on the writer themselves. Take me for example, what I do is kind of a mix of Anne’s and George’s method. I do a lot of revising on my first draft works (especially for when I’m writing my story) just like George. But I also work like Anne in terms of creating and keeping more drafts because it would be used as a guidance to look back to for when I’m finalizing my writing piece.
Overall, something that everyone should take into consideration when having their mental showdown against their first draft is to just take it easy and go in your pace. Not everyone may have the same ideas as you; but at the end of the day, were all just trying to hand something good in. Whether it’s for work or for a major assignment that you didn’t do until the very last second.
For more explanation on both authors that I’ve mentioned in this post, I highly recommend looking into Emma Goldman’s “First Drafts”. She also wrote a blog post about them while discussing her ideas. It was a joy for me to read because we simply had some similarities on our writing processes.
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