In the excerpt “Shitty First Drafts” by Anne Lamott found in Bird by Bird the writer is explaining the benefits of writing the first draft with whatever comes to mind with no limitations. The thesis is “even better news than that of short assignments is the idea of shitty first drafts.” This is the thesis because it makes the reader wonder what exactly the writer is talking about. Lammott states that many writers, including herself, rarely know what they are doing until they are in the mist of doing it or have done it recently. She expresses that many writers get discouraged and upset with their selves and have to go do something else and come back to the work that she is working on. In paragraph five, it shows how a simple food review intimidated her, and she struggled with producing quality works unless she let it all come out in a limitless first draft. When preparing a food review for California magazine Lamott began by writing twice as much as she should, it would normally have a boring beginning, and stupefying descriptions of the meals. After the first draft she would take a break from writing, her nerves were shot and she felt as if her talent was vanishing. The following day she would sit down and go through it using a …show more content…
I tend to stare at the paper just wondering how I should begin my essay when in reality I’m just going to change it or delete it as I go. Also, I procrastinate on assignments because they intimidate me, especially when I know that my peers will be reading it. By reading this excerpt I feel like it is going to help me on future assignments by pushing me to get started. As she stated multiple times, no one is going to read your first draft so just write whatever is on your mind and go from there. In my argumentative essay I have revised my thesis statement multiple times and deleted more than half of my essay, because I felt that it wasn’t up to
“Once people actually write to others, they do things to them, they act on them. Perhaps you have not thought of your own writing as doing something, as acting on readers” (Schmidt and Kopple). She states another time when she says, “I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, not one them sits down routinely feeling widely enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts” (Lamott). This is yet another example of Lamott going back to the subject that first drafts are supposed to be bad. There is one example of bad rhetoric and it is when she says, “Not one of them writes elegant drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much. We do not think that she has a rich inner life or that God likes her or can even stand her.” At first she says that everyone writes bad first drafts and then she brings up how one person doesn’t need to, she went against what she just said and that might cause confusion for the reader. Lamott would tell this purpose to this audience because she wants them to improve in their writing. Anne Lamott wants to achieve the success of helping everyone excel in his or her writing. She wants to inform writers that all first drafts should be bad. She does not want them to feel down on themselves, and to continue writing. This purpose is important because this
In her article “Shitty First Drafts,” Anne Lamott creates an argument attempting to prove to her readers that every good writer begins with a “shitty” first draft. This is a very bold claim to make about writers, and obviously should have some solid evidence to back it up. However, contrary to what one might think, Lamott has little to no “real” evidence to support her statements. Instead, she uses humor and sarcasm to cover the fact that she has no real support for her views. By doing this, Lamott lacks much of the credibility (usually) needed in a rhetorical argument, and her humorous tone does not suffice for a convincing argument. Even though Lamott incorporates a great deal of sarcasm and absurdity in her work, she lacks the most important
In the article “Shitty First Drafts,” By Anne Lamott, she lets out the long held secret to good writing, there is never a good first run on a paper. It 's always starts off as a torrent of ideas unfiltered, ideas completely let loose. It is the draft that is never shown to anyone, the draft that holds all the dirty little thought that you have on a topic, and all the information that you may use later on. It does not matter if the draft is ten pages long filled with unreadable text in the end the good stuff you use could only fill up three pages.
In the essay “Getting Started” by Anne Lamott. The author reaches out to her students and other fellow writers who struggle to overcome the infamous writer’s block. Thought out her paper she gives us hints and tips to train and prep us for our future papers. Her tips range from training you mind to prepare for a long and often strenuous essay, learning to take information in slowly to not overwork your brain and the last one always tell the truth in your essay. She threads through her essay that writing may be hard and seems like there is no silver lining but it’s not impossible to do. When done reading this essay I widely agree with Lamott’s writing ideas and tips they can be helpful for many struggling students. As one myself I found
She starts off by telling readers of her position in writing food reviews for the California Magazine. Next, she begins to explain the steps she took in writing one of these reviews. First she would go to one of the restaurants, not only once but a numerous amount of times. Along with her she would bring a team of opinionated friends who would help her to freely express what she was trying to purpose to readers. After a few days she would sit down to her desk and begin her journey in trying to write her first draft. Through this process she would stumble and struggle with finding the perfect way to compose her review. Lamotts last thought in this paragraph is one that should help but writers to ease, no matter how "shitty" your first draft is, it's quite alright because no one is going to read it
While I was reading “shitty first draft” by, Anne Lamott I read a lot of good ideas on how to write well written papers. In my mind i’ve always thought that it was right to do a first draft because everything that you throw in there is just for your ideas not for everyone to see and that is exactly what anne lamott states in “shitty first drafts”. In my imagination I always figured that authors just sat down and already had in mind what they had to write but that is not true, most writers often just make a shitty draft so that they can organize their books etc. correctly. Lamott also stated that when she would write she would just write for example freewrite when you right without making and corrections, just writing the first thing that pops to your mind and it is possible that when you read it over you’ll get your perfect written work. When i read the title of Anne Lamott’s paper and read “shitty first draft” i was completely confused and now that i’ve read what she has to say and writing and who she is it makes me want to read one of her books, and while i read i 'm probably going to be
As time goes by, I noticed how reading and writing became one of my weaknesses. Having an assignment readings and writing an essay about it was one of the things I don’t like doing. I am not sure if there are any valid reason on why I don’t like it but all I know is there is always a point where I end up getting stuck because I do not know what else to say. Also, reading gets deeper and some of the words are hard to understand especially when some of the readings use metaphors. However, in every essay I turned in, I always look forward on all of my teacher’s comments because I always want to know what else I am missing, what else to say, and how to improve it. I guess in this case, Sherman Alexie and I are opposite towards our view on writing but we are the alike on the view of learning and improving.
By reading, Anne Lamott’s essay, her writing process is interesting, in my opinion. She explains that her writing isn’t always flawless but rather shitty in the beginning. Anne writes one “shitty” draft and after that she analyzes her draft. By doing this she takes out words or finds a new beginning on the second page or as she says finding something great on the last sentence on page six. I think the process Anne takes is important to her because she not only can say anything in her shitty draft but the freedom she has. She doesn’t have to worry about anyone read that draft expect her.
English composition has always been a weak point for me. I despised the thought of having to write down my thoughts on paper in a manner that was appropriate for my teachers. English 1301 introduced me to a new tool to soothe those crazy thoughts through stream of conscious writing. At first I was very skeptical, but it proved to be valuable in understanding that I had more knowledge of the topic of discussion than was realized. Although that tool helped tremendously, it did nothing to quell the quality of my procrastination skills. In high school, I completed most of my homework at the last minute. Coming into college, that clearly could no longer be the case but it still stuck. One concept that utilized my procrastination skills to my advantage was peer review. Peer review forced me to write all of my essays ahead of time in order to make the grade. Not only did it help with my procrastination, it also gave me lots of feedback on my writing. During the narrative essay draft one, I was given a lot of revisionary advice, and that was due to the fact that I wrote the paper at the last minute. Knowing that, when it came time to write the argumentative essay I spent more time actually putting better grammar and diction into my essay because I did not want my peers to think any less of me academically. As
I set my phone timer to go off in 40 minutes and I manly focused on the thesis, topic sentences, and quotes. This took up all my time and my initial thoughts on my first draft were very critical. My essay was extremely short with no introduction or conclusion, and didn’t show any contrasting relationship between the two men’s use of rhetoric. I planned to write the rough draft toward the end of Christmas break, so that I could ask my English teacher to read and write notes on it on Monday to help me make it better. When I found out that she would be absent all week, I got out a marker and read it aloud to myself in class, marking it us as I went. (My edits are in the Appendix
I am sitting in my bed, thinking about my process of writing as I am trying to go through it. It seems the more I think about it, the less I understand it. When I am writing, I don’t think. Which I know, sounds bad. But, I spend every single moment of every single day over thinking, over analyzing, and over assuming every aspect of my life. When I’m writing, I’m free from that for just a little bit. Until of course, my hands stop typing or the pencil (no pens- never pens) stops moving, then I’m right back on the carousel that is my brain. Heidi Estrem says, “...writers use writing to generate knowledge that they didn’t have before.” (Writing is a Knowledge-Making Activity 18). I believe my ability to write without an exact destination
The unwillingness to begin homework can be attributed to the detractor of all things productive: procrastination. It is the bane of the college student’s academic career, therefore, it needs to be identified, addressed, and hopefully forgotten for as long as it takes to finish the essay. It comes in many forms, such as obsessively checking one’s cell phone, but the most common iteration of it is the person who leaves vague status updates on Facebook, undoubtedly baiting for people to comment on his post, but no one on his friends list bites, leaving him with no other option than to retract his update, which in turn wastes time—time that should be spent on writing his paper! The last time I observed someone so adamantly trying to avoid writing an essay was when I got into an argument with my friend Karol over, as foolish as it may sound, the validity of carob as a chocolate substitute. The end result of the debate was having her admit that she did not want to write her essay that was due the following day.
Over the past semester, I have found the most challenging part of this course to simply be the transition from high school composition classes to college. Because writing expectations are so different in college than in high school, even with AP and Dual Enrollment “college level” classes, I first found myself being overwhelmed with the pressure to write the perfect first draft. The pressure came from knowing how much a final draft of a paper contributed to my grade. This left me sitting in front of my computer for hours at a time with thoughts of what I wanted to say racing through my head, but unable to deliver these thoughts into organized, structured sentences. I learned, through writing my persuasive essay, that instead of trying to write the paper start to finish and already in its perfect form, it is easier for me to look at the paper through its different components and focus on them individually, then work to best organize my ideas fluently.
When I write a paper, I usually tend to write and edit at the same time. I could never continue writing without correcting my mistakes and making sure everything seems perfect. However, throughout this course, it made me realize that I should write everything on my mind, when writing a paper, just like I would in my notes. Later on, I should revise and edit my paper, making sure to cut back ideas and sentences that are off topic. Additionally, I’m the type of person that likes to write with no boundaries. Writing my research argument essay, made me realize that I could stick to a structure and yet bend the rules a little bit. When we started with this assignment, I was truly excited to research and write about a topic that I am passionate about. When we were asked to form an outline, I was bummed. I felt like I wasn’t able to form ideas or narrow down my topic, let alone write...
shitty first drafts. All good writers write them. This is how they end up with good