Anne Lamott and George Dila are both writers yet have different writing methods. Anne Lamott prefers to get all her ideas down on paper whether she thinks she’ll keep it or not. In “Shitty First Drafts” she states how “no one is going to see and that you can shape it later.” With this mindset, Lamott writes shitty drafts which she then revises and turns it into a final draft. On the other hand, George Dila does the opposite. Instead of writing shitty drafts, he writes a decent draft. In “Rethinking the Shitty First Draft” he states ” I worked on the opening sentence for a couple of writing sessions, trying different strategies, different approaches. Through trial and error, the sentence suddenly came together.” Unlike Lamott, Dila prefers to revise as he writes his first draft which will most likely result in a decent draft.
My writing method is similar to George Dila’s method. I personally don’t like to write shitty first drafts because of my terrible time management, my first draft is usually the final draft. Thus I try to make the first draft as perfect as it can be, revising every little mistake I see on the way and making sure that the sentence are how I want them to be. I have tried using Anne Lamott’s method before and it did not turn out great. A simple two page essay about famous Supreme Court cases turned out into a 5 page essay about this television show that my siblings watch. Nothing on that draft was related to those Supreme Court cases which was a waste of time. Through trial and error, I found Dila’s method to be most beneficial for me.