Anne Lamott's "Shitty First Drafts" and "Perfectionism" really made me feel like I was the one she was directly talking to. I am sometimes a perfectionist but only when it really counts. Sometimes, however, I am not. There may even be typos in this post that I should have noticed and corrected. When I am a perfectionist though, I do find myself wasting a lot of time. After reading Lamott, I realized that it's just the first draft and I should be getting out all of my ideas first before I can even actually process it. What matters is that I don't lose any important ideas by trying to be a perfectionist. There have actually been moments where I think to myself while trying to perfect my writing, "wait I was going to say something important that related to this" and end up never being able to remember it.
I think this reading really helped me figure out how to go about writing not just my first draft but also writing in general. In the past I was always worried about finding the right words and always had thesaurus.com open (which actually did help a lot) but now I think my main focus should be to just say everything the way I would normally say it and make it more concise later on. In general, writing should also be kept in your own style and words and if you try too hard to make it perfect, you may end up turning it into something else.
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