I should write more shitty drafts

I didn't relate to Anne Lamott's piece, "Shitty First Drafts," on a personal level, because I don’t typically write like she does. While I do think that many of my first drafts are shitty, I don't usually take the stream of conscience approach that she suggests. Instead, I attempt to write in an organized fashion modeled after the thesis and outline I constructed. I go in with a plan and I try to stick to it rather than allowing myself to find good strong writing through, well, writing. I try to think my way to a strong paper rather than write my way to one. While this approach often makes for quick writing of an essay, it leaves me trapped within the confines of the generic and sub-par outline I threw together the day before I started writing.

Instead, I should write more shitty drafts. Lamott’s piece put into words what I have learned from writing these blog posts: that writing not only helps me flesh out my ideas, but helps me state them thoughtfully and accurately. Typically, the strongest part of my blog post comes at the end, the point at which I have spent the most time thinking about the subject at hand. I ought to take the same approach with writing papers. The 250-word response to my thesis was a good start and there are parts of it I will likely use in some form in my paper, but writing a shitty first draft in the way Lamott discusses will help me discover more good writing that lives somewhere inside my brain.