Journal 3

After reading Lamott's "Shitty First Drafts" piece I realized a couple of different things. The first being that I realized I only occasionally have to write a shitty first draft like she says has to be written every time. For example, while writing research papers or even most thesis driven essays, I can easily just wing what I want to write and don't change my first draft very drastically from my final product. However I do occasionally write short stories and journals just for my own personal enjoyment. When writing these types of things, I love writing shitty first drafts just because it allows you to get all your feelings and thoughts running through your head down on a computer so you don't forget any of it and can pick it apart. This leads to the third question asked at the end of the excerpt I read.

Writing a "shitty" first draft isn't about reaching a perfect product but more about the process to get to that finished product. Like I said earlier while writing that first draft you don't have to worry about your audience, or a point your trying to prove, or even to much of a story line. The point of the first draft, or at least the point of it in my opinion, is to visualize your thoughts and more importantly your emotions on a subject. Then from reading the draft you can pick out the things that your audience can relate to and the lines that actually have meaning and create an "up draft" from there. This process allows you to be able to write something more meaningful and from the heart, which I feel is almost more important than the plot line of the story. For a reader to be able to feel what is happening to you is far more important than the story that is actually happening. Anyone could write about someone dying but not everyone could make that story relatable and interesting.

However I do have to disagree with some points that writers can't just sit down and have a good first draft once in a while. I have written some of my favorite pieces in one sitting with out much revision done to them. Though I do understand that this is not always possible but sometimes, if you take enough time to organize your thoughts in your head before hand, you can sit down and write an amazing first draft that comes straight from the heart. However for this personal memoir that we have to write I will be writing a "down draft" and then an "up draft." My main reason for doing this is because the situation I will be writing about is still emotionally overwhelming for me at times because it has happened so recently and I need to be able to express my emotions to words for the first time. I'm doing this to both challenge myself and help myself maybe get some hurt feelings off my chest at the same time. Therefore I will be doing a lot of drafting for this memoir and it may be hard for me to organize the events in a way people can understand at first but I'm hoping this paper will turn out the way I want it to regardless with the help of these first couple drafts.