Anne Lamott was one of the featured writers at Lenoir-Rhyne’s visiting writers series. In my English 131 class, we read Anne Lamott’s piece titled “Shitty First Drafts.” In this work, Lamott describes the process of writing first drafts. She states that not even the very talented writers write good first drafts. Lamott also states that it is important get the first draft down, no matter how bad it is. I found this article very important and relevant to me as a student. I always find it hard to start a paper and even sometimes what I should write about. It was very surprising to hear that even professional or really talented writers struggle with starting their papers. I also found it relevant to me when Lamott stated that “the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts.” I never thought of just putting ideas down for a starting point. When writing a paper I tend to think that I must have a plan and know where I’m going from there. This will be very helpful for my future writings because now I know I should just get ideas down and then go back and edit them and then make the thoughts flow cohesively.
In addition, I found it very unique and interesting that she made many references to teeth in her essay. One example is when Lamott states that writers “often feel like we are pulling teeth.” The comparisons Lamott uses helps to enable the reader to feel what all writers feel when trying to make their first draft. These comparisons also help to emphasize how hard it is for all writers to write the first draft. Many people understand the idiom of pulling teeth and can relate to it so it helps to strengthen Lamott’s point about writing first drafts. This work shows the reader insight to the fact that even Lamott and other talented writers struggle with writing first drafts. Overall, this was a very interesting work about writing first drafts and showed me that even talented and professional writers struggle with writing their first draft.
Work Cited
Lamott, Anne. “Shitty First Drafts.” College of Arts & Sciences Writing, Rhetoric & Digital Studies. U of Kentucky, n.d. PDF. 9 April 2016.
Samantha Geyer 