About Shitty First Drafts

I read Shitty First Drafts by Anne Lamott. I felt that it paralleled the ideas of freewriting we read about in Freewriting by Peter Elbow in that you write whatever you feel. Throw the cards up in the air and see where they fall. 

I like the idea of putting down all your thoughts on to paper. Even though they may be seemingly worthless, silly, or inane. Mixing them up with what you feel to be brilliant bits of prose. All of this pouring out of you in one fell swoop. Because there is good and bad writing inside us all. The worthless and inane, possibly insane, thoughts may turn out to be your brightest gems. But, what you originally believed to be brilliant could end up lining the bottom of your birdcage (if you have ever read or seen the Anne Of Green Gables series then you'll understand what I mean. Anne always felt that the $20 words should  be used when a good old nickel word would have sufficed. She generally ended up sounding like a blooming idiot).

I am also a big fan of using humor as often as possible. The author and I seem to have a similar dark, sarcastic, and twisted sense of humor. As I  was scanning different pieces to decide which one I wanted to submit as my offering I ran across this final paragraph. "A writer friend of mine suggests opening the jar and shooting them in the head. But I think he's a little angry, and I'm sure nothing like this would ever occur to you." I was immediately hooked! I jumped to the beginning of the story praying that it would somehow work as the topic for my assignment. Joy of joy it would! I found the advice that went along with the jar shooting incident to be very helpful. Basically she is trying to find a way to quiet all the doubters voices she hears in her head. She was given the advice to isolate each individual voice and imagine the person speaking to be a mouse. I personally will imagine them to be anything but a mouse as mice give me nightmares. I think they will become crickets chirping away with their opinions. Anyway, you are then supposed to pick them up one by one and drop them into the jar. Watch all the mouse/cricket people trying to get out so they can tell you how wrong you are for not giving them everything they want. Turn the volume control on the jar all the way up. I'm not sure why the jar has volume control or why you would even why you would want a jar with volume control but whatever. Listen to them for a moment then turn the volume all the way down and get back to what you need to be doing.

I don't think this piece could have gotten any more personal. I feel like this writer pours her soul into everything she does even if it is a shitty first draft of a review of a bad restaurant. I hope to be able to do the same.