Difficulty 1 : Anne Lamott's Article.

In Ann Lamott’s article titled “Shitty First Drafts”, she begins in the first paragraph with a broad generalization of writers, stating that all writers go through the process of writing horrible first drafts in order to get to a “terrific third draft”. She uses wit and humor throughout the article to, perhaps, distract us from the fact that she is no authority on writers, only a writer herself. Lumping all writers into one group of those that write “shitty first drafts” is a risky thing to do. I was taught that generalizations should be avoided, especially when making an argument. She may be doing this for the sake of the article but I feel it decreases her credibility a bit by generalizing.

Lamott says that the “first draft is the child’s draft where you let it all pour out and romp all over the place…”. I believe she is saying that you should get something, anything, on to the paper. While I agree that a blank page staring back at you can be intimidating, often making the writing process that much harder, allowing the first draft to be comparable to a child’s behavior does not work for me. I was taught that a rough draft is just that, rough, but it also needs to be cohesive and relevant to our main idea. In my last English class, English 1C: Critical Thinking, at City College San Francisco, we had to turn our rough drafts in to our professor which were then passed back out for peer evaluation. He noted the students that did not have a paper to turn in. He also noted if the rough drafts were nonsensical or not the proper length (similar to that of the final paper). Coming to his class with a quote like “Well so what Mr. Poopy Pants” would just not fly.

I think that Anne Lamott has some valid points, primarily that yes, rough drafts tend to be quite different than the final, but I do disagree with some of her methods of getting to the final draft. My main issue with her methods is exactly how rough a first draft should be.