SUMMARY-SHITTY FIRST DRAFTS

In this essay Anne Lamott talks about the problems faced by writers in producing the perfect draft of their writing. She says no writer gets it right the first time. Every writer has to write several drafts before arriving at the final draft. She describes the pains a writer has to endure while writing. She says even great writers do not get it in the first draft. Readers might think that a writer sits down to write with great confidence and write great sentences at once. She says that reality is very different.

Lamott says tat no writer feels thrilled when he sits down to write. On the contrary writing is a painful process. One who is given to a life of writing does not have much choice except to keep writing and hears the pain of not finding the right words and expression. So what results is a very bad first draft.

She compares the first draft to a child’s writing, something to be hidden from others’ view. She says in the first few pages the child in us may be dominant but slowly the mature voice will take over. The good sentences may come once we have exhausted the emotional part of us. She also states that to reach that mature writing one has to go through this process.

She talks about her own writing which is a critical review for a food magazine. She says she would go to a restaurant with her friends and write everything she hears. And then she would worry about her writing which she considers as ‘dreadful’. She is so frustrated that she thinks of doing clerical work. Then she would slowly pull herself up and sit down to write again in a clam state of mind.

This time she would just write everything that comes to her mind. She imagines her critics sitting on her shoulders and watching her write. She feels that after all what she writes is not going to change anything.

She says that her first draft would be very long with unnecessary information which she would remove in her second writing. She complains that the movement from first draft to second draft is so painful that she even thinks of killing herself. She would even have doubts about her writing skills.

The next day she would sit again to write the second draft and she would have more clarity on the subject. She says cheerfully that things would become fine and funny this time. Then she would polish her second draft.

The process is repeated for every critical review with same fears and self-doubt dogging her.

She talks about the stages of writing in which the first draft has to be done somehow so that you can fix things up in the second draft. The third draft is the real thing which should be without any flaw.