George Dila begins his article, “Rethinking the Shitty First Draft” criticizing Anne Lamott’s statement that the first draft is the “shitty” draft. While he doesn’t necessarily oppose Lamott’s way of writing, he wants the readers to know that it is alright for their way of writing to be different from that of Lamott’s, who believes in writing “shitty” first drafts and states that “All good writers write them”. Dila states that his approach towards writing first drafts differs from that of Lamott’s because he prefers to revise his work as he goes along rather than pouring out all his thoughts on a sheet of paper mindlessly and improving them later, like the latter. “In fact, I cannot even allow myself to write a shitty first sentence, let alone immediately follow the first with another few hundred shitty sentences.” he mentions.
While Anne Lamott’s method might provide an answer to the self-doubt that most writer’s face, as stated by George Dila, I believe in conquering my self doubt using Dila’s method. I often find myself obsessing over the first sentence, or even the title of an article that I have to write. For example, this essay itself isn’t the result of several drafts arising from a “shitty” first draft; It’s the outcome of constant fixing of each word and sentence present in it. Moreover, this is my first draft.
This method or strategy seems to work for me because I’m someone who feels passionate towards writing and perfecting every piece written by me. I cannot bear the thought of letting a “shitty” sentence sit at the top of my draft, waiting to be improved later on. It gives me a feeling of incompleteness and sometimes, mere procrastination. Some may argue that writing shitty first drafts gives one the opportunity to put down all their ideas on a piece of paper and room for improvement, I believe that improving one’s work as one goes about doing it gives a more satisfactory result, as a few tweaks here and there would lead the work to perfection. Thus, I would like to conclude with Dila’s idea that if the foundation or the base of a building isn’t strong, the strength of the top floors doesn’t matter.