Better late than never...the shitty first draft

It is too much of a common struggle to put complex ideas into clear, sharp and concise words on paper. After writing my first paper for my infamous high school English teacher and consequently seriously being asked, “do you even know how to write a sentence?”, I thought I should brainstorm a different approach to my writing of essays. After seeing that not only my English teacher, but everyone else who read my writing was highly confused by the content, I realized that I never wrote exactly what I meant and expected the reader to make jumps that I had not fully laid the groundwork for. I was too concerned with eloquence and big words to make a real impact on the page. When my mom told me to explain to me her thesis as I would to a friend, I finally realized the value of simplicity in writing. Since then, before almost every written assignment I write down a sort of stream of consciousness, which usually makes little to no sense, but it takes my ideas out of my head and into the tangible world. This lets me see, alter, cut, and organize my ideas into something I can start to think of in concise words. I have an intrinsically disorganized brain and fully believe in the power of the “shitty first draft” to do the organization for me. It puts my ideas into a state where I can refine them without muddling them up in my head or forgetting them as new ones pass by. The shitty first draft taught me how to write a sentence.