Journal 3

After reading The excerpt from Anne Lamott’s book of the chapter “Shitty First Drafts,” I can reflect off of what she is saying and relate it to my own writing process that I do. I think Lamott is saying that writing a first draft is more about the process than the product, but I do have to disagree with her in some aspect. I usually only do two drafts, so i try to do as best as i can on my first draft. But other times I am just looking to get a start and get something down on paper, so i do in some ways write a Shitty First Draft. My favorite thing i like to do is write a few sentences or a paragraph then go back and read it to make sure it makes sense before i go on with the rest of my paper.The main thing i can relate to in the writing is when i first sit down at my computer I do a million other things first and get distracted very easily. I will also get and walk around the room maybe get something to eat, so it always takes me a while to get started on something. Then when i finally do sit down, I get in the “zone” and just start typing away. Another problem i run into is in the middle of my first draft. A lot of times i will get stuck and then i will do more un productive stuff like surf the web, read the paper, or watch some television. So alot of the time it takes me a long time to get a first draft done. I also agree in the way if you do type something that is too long, there is always something good in that writing that you can take in use when you start doing a second or third draft, so something good always can come out of something you write.

Recently when i wrote my personal narrative i stumbled upon this problem of writing a first draft. Like Lamott i took notes on what i wanted to talk about and eventually sat down to write my draft. After getting distracted by many pointless things around, I finally got started on my draft. Like I said before i wrote my intro then went back and fixed it and continued that process. So it is kinda like writing a shitty first draft, but i just like doing it piece by piece instead of the whole paper at once. This made my story stronger, because it forces you to put more time into the writing you are doing and try different styles and formats, so overall it helps the paper dramatically. Like Lamott, a lot of the times i will edit my paper myself, but since we were doing a peer review in class, i opted not to until after the exercise, because i wanted to see what my partner had to say about my paper.