Rough Drafts

 

When reading the incredibly short article Shitty First Drafts there were many things that I thought were interesting. First off when she said that she would write something just to get it done and not have it even resemble what it should is an interesting way to go about writing. When I write for my papers I usually put in a lot of thought into it as I am typing and than my second draft highly resembles my second, but for Anne Lamott she goes the route of writing her “shitty” first draft with intentions of it not being good at all.

I was able to relate a lot to her when saying that first drafts are supposed to be bad because by the title the are needing work. She puts a whole new meaning to the idea of a rough draft with statements like “just making my fingers move” When talking about writing for her first draft not caring about it because it isn't how you get to the finished product but just the quality of the final draft. Hopefully I learn a lesson from this whole experience and start doing this in my own first drafts because it would help with my problems I have with writers block. More than anything a rough draft gives you a blueprint for where your paper will go because once you have the groundwork made it will be incredibly easier to continue to work forward on what you have.

A problem I have had in papers is that I have made my “shitty rough draft” also my “shitty final draft” because I was to lazy to continue working on it, didn't think it was worth my time, and that I didn’t have the time in general. This problem may in fact be my biggest issue in my big bag of problems I have with writing. All in all shitty rough drafts make for smooth final drafts, and that if you want a quality paper maybe the best way to get to that point is to force out a shitty first draft that has little to no resemblance of your final draft because at least you got the ball rolling. 

Writers Block

As we continue to analyze writing we have also covered the things in writing that have caused me extreme amounts of pain and anguish. The subject of Mike Rose’s article A Cognitive Analysis of Writers Blog covers the thing that has caused the most of all other things that have plagued me. Whether I am fully prepared for writing or am just about to “wing it” i have always struggled with writing for my ideas never seem to be able to come out right once I am sitting at the computer. As Rose states plans are much different than executing because you can plan as much as you want but when it comes down to it you may realize that your idea wasn't as strong as it could have been or you may not be able to put your plan down on paper. These reasons make writing a pain because writers block for me is raised to a new level whenever I am stressed. 
There also times when writer's block doesn't hit me even a little and ideas come into fruition when i start to type and i never have problems. These moments are rare but they let me understand the difference between having and not having writers block. In life there are many things like writers block such as quick decisions and even dinner decisions but the key thing behind writers block and both of my examples is they have deadlines that need to be met which is what causes your mind to go blank and for nothing to get accomplished.

Planning and Stress

Planning before writing a paper is a completely necessary step and is essential for a paper to be optimized. In Carol Berkenkotter’s article “Decisions and Revisions: The Planning Strategies of a Publishing Writer” I had a sad realization that my own planning has lacked throughout my writing. I think that if you are planning a paper correctly you will come out much farther ahead than if not. In the article when she wrote about revisions i had a strong realization that my own papers need more revisions. But I also realized that I plan just like the college students in her paper saying that most of the time you are writing you aren't writing at all, in fact you are thinking about what you will write.

I have a serious problem with planning too much when writing a paper if the paper has a lot of worth behind it. A situation that I have in the forefront of my mind was my junior year at Sentinel High School in Missoula. We had to take a writing assessment for college, the test was called the MUSWA (I believe it stood for Montana university system writing assessment). A major requirement for this assignment was to reach a certain word count which was a problem because I put much more time into having a quality paper than have a paper which was basically all filler. I was like a deer in the headlights when my teacher announced that there was  fifteen minutes left for us to write because I had much less written than I should have at that point. By the time the time limit had been completely finished I had half as much written as many people in my class and i realized it was going to hurt me down the road.

Writing this thought piece shows me the parallels between then and now. This thought piece has much less riding on it than that time my junior year and i have been able to not get locked up because i don't feel as if it needs to be perfect. Planning should not cause anxiety in fact it should cause confidence because you should know that your paper is a higher quality than it would have been. But because of time frames and due dates it can cause a lot of anxiety in a student (or maybe its just me).