Blog Post 2- "Shitty First Drafts"
“Shitty First Drafts”… even the title of the chapter brings up the memories of the late nights when I stayed up staring at a blank word page willing my frozen fingers to type coherent sentence that would make up my college essays. Even in elementary school, my teachers had always stressed the importance of revising essays rather than letting the rough draft be the final draft. Sometimes my teacher would even make us revise our essays in class. However, my writing was far from perfect. I came to the conclusion that my essays would hardly get any better and that revising essays was a waste of time.
The notion that I had about revising essays soon came to question when I was writing my essay for college applications. The dry prompt that was given to me hardly left me with an idea of where to start, and whatever I did manage to write was pure garbage. Like Lamott, I quickly deleted what I wrote and procrastinated for a little while until I had the guts to go back to my laptop and try again. Staring at the bare Microsoft word page with a deadline looming over my shoulder, I finally manage to write whatever came to mind. Once the last sentence of my essay was written, I read over my now too long essay, and thought it was awful. Although my essay was still terrible, I could see where I was going with it. Proud of the progress I made, I decided to fix my rough draft the next day.
The next day came sooner than I wanted it to, and I found myself right back at my desk in front of my laptop. I read over my essay and began to make revisions. I took out sentences here and there, made corrections on spelling and grammar, and fixed sentences to make my essay slightly better than it was before. Happy with how my essay improved, I decided to fix my revised draft the next day.
Once again, the next day came sooner than I wanted to, and I was back in front of my laptop, ready to finish my revisions so I can send in my essay and forget about it. Revising and polishing my essay was way easier this time and before I knew it, my final draft was finished. Quickly reading over my work, I was very pleased with my college essay and saved it three times before sending it in.
Looking back at the essay, it came out to be one of the best essays I have ever written and I couldn’t help but acknowledge that how going back and revising my essays really turned my awful first draft into a great final draft.