When I read “Shitty First Drafts” by Anne Lamott, I was really surprised. Of course, the title was an attention getter but the surprising part was her saying that nearly all writers have shitty first drafts. I honestly thought that a lot, if not all, professional writers could just sit down and write something good. There would be some editing and revising but basically the first draft was good, not shitty. I know that some writers suffer from writer’s block from time to time but I thought that for the most part, a professional writer could just come up with something to write. That’s kind of why they are professional writers, because they can come up with something to write easily and because they do good work the first time, not having to rewrite and rewrite. I don’t know why I thought that but I did. However, people like me suffer from writer’s block on an ongoing bases and have to rewrite and rewrite everything. I will even start something, hate it, pitch it, and start a totally different topic. I guess that is what professionals do too. Maybe the difference is that I do not enjoy writing and I really don’t like sharing it with the world. It feels so personal to me and I would really rather no one read what I write. Having to write and publish my writing on a blog is quite torturous. I just feel so self-conscious. The other difference at least with me and this author is that she said her first draft is usually twice as long as it should be. Mine always seem shorter than needed and I go back and kind of fill in the blanks. She goes through her first drafts and takes out everything she can. For me, there is some deleting but mostly adding. Even though I have a lot of differences, this story made me feel much better about my writing attempts and gave me some much needed confidence.
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