Shitty First Drafts
It’s nice to know that you aren’t the only one to feel panic
when you have a writing assignment that you need to get done but just don’t
know how to get started. I always find myself making my first draft my final
draft. I relate to Anne when she says “I’d try to write a lead, but instead I’d
write a couple of dreadful sentences, X them out, try again, X everything out,
and then feel despair and worry settle on my chest like an x-ray apron.” She couldn’t have explained that any better.
Because everyone knows the weight of an x-ray apron and that is exactly how it
feels to feel the writers panic. Every time I am told that I will be writing
paper in a class I start to get anxiety. I think to myself” I can’t do that.
I’m a terrible writer.” But I don’t even know what the writing assignment is
yet and I always thought that once I sat down at the computer I should have a
paper already written in my head. What I got out of this article was that it’s
about the first draft. You just have to sit down and write down what comes to
mind. It doesn’t matter how shitty the writing is. When you get all this down
you can cut down what you don’t want and don’t need in the second draft. It’s
all about the shitty first draft.
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