Journal Three: Shitty frist draft!

When I try to write papers or anything at all, just knowing where to start is the hardest thing for me. I attempt to write my first draft like if it was my final draft. I try to make the first draft perfect because I feel need to get it right the first time and to just be done with it. This is my problem through out my whole career of writing. I need to just go against my natural want and need to get things right the first time and just type away just start somewhere. If I follow the process of just writing anything down just to start the paper, I would be better off than my past ways of writing papers perfect the first time. Having a shitty first draft is fine according to this book by Anne Lamott. So for now on, I will use this process of writing shitty first drafts to maybe finish writing my paper faster because before I would waste my time staring at the computer screen trying to think of the perfect idea and trying to just know how to start. I like the way the author relates the first draft as a child. She said let your first draft should be like a child because you know no one is going to see it so you can let everything come out and let it go all over the place because you know you can fix it later.

If I would to grow up to be a professional writer, it would have to be either about sports or about food because those r the things I know best. The author of this book wrote food reviews for some California magazine. She would wait to one of the last days to start writing her work and if she could not think of something right away to put down on the paper, she would panic. I can relate to this because when I cannot think of how to start a paper I would go in to a downward spiral. When I can think of anything to write down I start thinking about how much time I am wasting and then all the consequences that will happen if I do not finish this paper. So basically things just get worse and worse as time goes on because I stop thinking of the task at hand and start thinking about everything else.

I can relate to the fact that people think professional writers just sit down and make perfect products right away because I use to think that professional authors did that. I even felt that most of my classmates wrote papers with ease. Writing is very hard for me due to the fact that it is so hard for me to get my ideas down on paper. After reading this chapter on shitty first drafts, I have learned that writing the first draft of a paper is not about the product it is about the process. This means the first draft can be bad because the first draft is about just getting started and getting the ideas down on paper so more ideas can flow in and complete the paper.