Anne Lamott's comical approach to explaining a step in the writing process that every writer must suffer through is actually full of useful advice. She stresses to the reader that the first draft is meant to be "shitty, "and that "all good writers write them." This first version has the right to be unorganized and grammatically incorrect. Lamott provides stories from her own career as a writer to relate to the reader. I had much to think about the essay as a whole. Whenever I have had to write any sort of paper up until now, I was always worried about what I was saying when I had not even written anything. I now realize this is a major factor that, to an extent, has been crippling my writing.
Nothing makes me more inclined to bang my head against a wall than writing any sort of paper. Before I even start the process I have this dreadful feeling in the pit of my stomach that is telling me that this is going to take a while. After a few minutes of contemplation and mindless Facebook surfing, I begin to write my first sentence. Something about this sentence never seems right, and after another five minutes of butchering, I have, what I feel is, the first sentence of my paper. My writing from here gets a bit easier sentence by sentence. I almost have to warm up. This first sentence is like stretching before going on a long run on a day when all I want to do is be a couch potato. My idea of writing is much worse than the actual process.
I need to warm up before I write. The first sentence in my writing is like stretching before going on a long run on a day when all I want to do is be a couch potato. That is to say that my thoughts about writing are much worse than actually siting down and doing it. Just like thinking about running, or doing any type of exercise on a day when you do not have much energy is far worse than when you are actually at the gym.
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