Anne Lamott perfectly captures how I feel about writing on a day-to-day basis. My feelings about writing are constantly changing, and it can go from one of my greatest passions one day, to the bane of my existence the next. Like Lamott said, I have always believed that most people in the world are gifted enough to sit down and write a masterpiece during their first draft. As for me, I have a very unconventional way of writing. Once I am given a topic, I typically write down random phrases that I would like to use in my piece (after 30 minutes of staring into blank space, hoping for a beautiful idea to present itself.) These phrases will have nothing to do with each other, and might not even sound decent at all, but I start each rough draft with about 5 to 10 random lines on a paper. I begin to build mini paragraphs from each of these sentences, as if each random sentence acted as my intro statement. From there, I do some major editing and trimming, cutting the paragraphs down into small clauses that fit together better than before. This draft is usually still a C minus at best, but I use it as a guide for the rest of my paper. When it comes to sharing my work, I get very insecure about it all, and only let a select few people read it for peer review. However, the older I’ve gotten, the more confident I’ve become with my work. One line from Lamott’s section that made me feel safe with my writing was, “Very few writers really know what they are doing until they’ve done it.” I’ve come to learn that this line is true universally, and there is no need to worry about your “shitty first drafts”, or even second and third drafts. I know I have around two or three practice drafts before I start to get the hang of things most of the time. I live off of shitty first drafts, and it’s a great feeling to know that they are essential in all kinds of writing.
