Everyone Needs a Shitty First Draft

I found the article “Shitty First Drafts” oddly comforting in a way. I am a student that does not find any joy in writing a paper. I find it comforting that people who write for a living hate it sometimes too, and my distaste for writing is not some sort of anomaly. The first draft is a way to get the ball rolling when writing seems impossible; it doesn’t need to be good. My first draft is almost always word vomit flowing from whatever train of thought I had at that exact moment and it is truly….shitty. It goes to show that even most groundbreaking pieces of literature can start out as a bunch of nonsense. The “shitty first draft” concept enforces the idea that nothing is perfect on the first try, especially writings. A solid writer will take their shitty first draft and change it and revise it so many times until they are 100% satisfied with their work. And this final revision wouldn’t have been possible without some of the key ideas that happened to flow out during the first draft. These ideas might not look or sound the same as they were presented in the first draft, but the main concept that is established usually sticks until the final draft. I also find it comforting that writers put themselves through the same painstaking cycle that I do when it’s time to sit down and get to writing. We all start out with a blank slate, not very many ideas, and not a very high desire to start putting words on a screen or pencil to paper. But eventually it starts to flow, even if the initial flow is not very good nor is it in a timely manner to when this assignment needs to be done. And I not only relate to throwing together a shitty first draft, I highly encourage it, because everyone needs to throw it all out there before figuring out what path to take.