Anne Lamott Bad First Draft Summary

What Anne Lamott is trying to convey in this excerpt is that every writer writes a bad first draft. No one can sit down and write the best novel, essay, etc. The objective of this passage is trying to convince people that it’s okay to not know exactly what you’re going to write, or everyone really does write first “shitty drafts”. People who write for a living don’t feel one hundred percent about their writing. They don’t sit down every day and know exactly what they are going to do. There is a process to their madness and having a bad first draft is going to be one of them. Lamott discusses that her own writing has terrible first drafts and sometimes looks nothing like the finish product. She talks about how she wrote a food review for a newspaper. She started off writing the meat of the review. She then went back and wrote down even more and more until she was finished. This is her way to persuade the readers. Basically, Lamott is trying to go against popular belief about writers and that they don’t have first drafts and know exactly what they are going to write. I do believe what she is saying. It is impossible to just sit down and write

a perfect first and final draft. This is good advice to people who are first starting out writing and even reminding other writers that it's okay to feel like this with your first draft. I believe that Lamott did a great job to convey the readers that no one is perfect and that everyone is going to have a bad first draft, second draft, and even a bad third draft.

Don Murray is trying to convey in his text that everything we write comes from us.

This means that even if we are writing a fiction novel, newspaper article, college essay; everything comes from our childhood and our memories and has emotion involved. In high school we learned that we just have to write and it comes from doing research and rarely from our own ideas. Murray is also saying that when we read another person’s writing we can not disembody ourselves. This means that when we read or write we will always have a human emotion or reaction. I do believe that Murray is correct. We can’t do anything basically without it. Every single thing that we do will have some sort of human reaction or emotion connected to it. I will also be aware of other people’s writing and how they write from their past and their own

emotions.

It is fairly obvious to me why Professor Kimbrell assigned these two readings. These readings help students like me ease into a writing class. I feel a little more comfortable starting to write because not everyone is perfect. Everyone will have “shitty first drafts.” I won’t be able to sit down all at once and write a perfect paper. No one can. Knowing that makes things a little more easier. Also, knowing where my writing comes from is helpful. I am not as self conscious about how I write because it’s me. Can my writing be better? You better believe it. It helps knowing why I write that way I do is going to be the first steps into fixing my writing.