"Shitty First Drafts" reflection

It’s a bit ironic that I’m basically writing a review about an essay that’s about a writer and how she wrote reviews for other people, but that’s not the point. This sentence is the first thing that came to my mind when I sat down to write this paper, and if I had just planned this paper to be my final draft I would not have typed it. I think this is the point that Lamott is trying to make. If I were to just write this whole paper out as a final draft then I wouldn’t be in the creative mindset I can have when I know what I am writing is not going to matter greatly. Because its much easier to do something when you go in thinking it won’t matter than when you go in thinking it’s definitely going to matter, at least I’d say it is, and I think Lamott would agree.

Lamott writes about how the average person may believe that writers just sit down and spew magical energy into words as they hastily type up a paper because thats, in a sense, what they were “born to do”. Lamott is quick to point out that this “fantasy of the uninitiated” is not a reality and that a person that has written a best selling novel is likely to have some difficulties when writing it. Sure, a writer may spew out magical words of wisdom and beauty at the very instant they start typing, but they’re also very likely to spew out some, well, shit (I apologize for how disgusting that sounds). Take this as an example, a builder can take wood, stone, nails, cement, etc. and quickly throw them together and he could build an amazing building with no schematics, but, at least I’d like to think, this is much less likely than if he/she were to sit down and make a few “rough draft” schematics beforehand.

I can’t say whether Lamott would consider the product or the process more important for an essay, just because I would never want someone to try to describe what I was thinking to other people (especially if they misunderstood me), but from what she says I’d have to say that they are both as important as each other. The process of writing a rough draft is more of an emotional inner-importance and the product of the rough draft is more of a progressive importance. If I were to focus on the process and just write things down for however long I wanted and then say “I’m done” I’d feel great from letting out all my thoughts and feelings, but what I had written may be lacking in transitions, introduction, and the conclusion may come to an abrupt end. However, if I were to focus too much on the product of my paper I might make good transitions and have a proper introduction and conclusion, but my paper may lack the beauty and emotion that comes from the process of writing a rough draft. A balance of process and product is needed in a good paper so, unless one is a magical writer who only spews magical energy from his/her fingertips, it is required for one to go through the process of the “shitty rough draft” and then to perfect the product of the paper in the second or third draft.