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Anne Lamott's shitty first draft
Anne Lamott's shitty first draft
Anne Lamott's shitty first draft
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Writing requires a delicate balance between pleasing an audience, yet finding and sticking true to personal perspectives. More often than not, people find themselves ignoring their own thoughts and desires and just following along with the crowd, not standing up and arguing for anything, leaving behind a wishy-washy essay because they are too scared to stray from the obligations to others before the obligation to themselves. Anne Lamott’s “The Crummy First Draft” and Koji Frahm’s “How To Write an A Paper” both evaluate and stress the importance to find your own voice in writing and to be more critical towards readers. The reader’s perspective needs to play a role in writing, but it should not overrule the writer themselves. Writing needs to …show more content…
Both Frahm and Lamott stress the importance to not worry about anyone but yourself when you are writing. The writer is always justified in following their own writing path because it is their work of art. The reader, of course, needs to be considered while writing through proper organization of ideas and flow in the writing piece, but the thoughts and ideas of the writer should be taken in consideration first. Lamott explains that it you need to silence the inner critic, “put the lid on, and watch all these mouse people clawing at the glass, jabbering away, trying to make you feel crummy” (Lamott 264). Simply ignore everyone else’s opinions, stick true to yourself, and focus on you and your draft to get the best possible outcome. Frahm holds a similar point of view encouraging clear, straightforward writing not one with a “Confusing introduction. Lack of content. Bad transitions. (and) Excessive grammatical errors.” (Frahm 271). The essay should not overly serious and takes risks to constantly push the boundaries to expose the author’s voice. While the other’s perspectives play a small role in the creation of an essay, the writer is always justified to take their own path in their writing and disregard any other
In this article written by David Bartholomae, the author discusses problems basic writers make and about how they must use the discourse (communication style) of the academic community they are writing to, to be an effective writer. Bartholomae believes that “Inventing the University," is being able to assemble and mimic the universities language(5). Which means, if a student wants to be an efficient writer, he or she must be able to speak the language of his or her audience. Bartholomae writes that a common mistake of basic writers is that they don’t use an authoritative voice, and tend to switch into a more passive voice. This could be due to the fact that students have difficulty establishing their mindset or attitude for an audience
Both of the articles “Dancing with Professors” by Patricia Limerick and “Shitty First Drafts” by Anne Lamott resolve the issues faced by college students when writing papers. The first article, “Dancing with Professors,” explains why college professors expect more elaborate papers even though they assign dull and un-motivational reading to their students. On the other end of the writing spectrum, “Shitty First Drafts” explains how valuable the first draft is to students, and why students should not feel weary about writing them.
This assignment is a testament of growth and contributed to my outlook on strategies towards improving my writing through the importance of understanding how crucial, each component of the writing process is and how in depth you should take each process. Lastly, this reflection advocated how editing is the principal task of every good writer. “To write is human, to edit is divine,” Stephen
While I was reading “shitty first draft” by, Anne Lamott I read a lot of good ideas on how to write well written papers. In my mind i’ve always thought that it was right to do a first draft because everything that you throw in there is just for your ideas not for everyone to see and that is exactly what anne lamott states in “shitty first drafts”. In my imagination I always figured that authors just sat down and already had in mind what they had to write but that is not true, most writers often just make a shitty draft so that they can organize their books etc. correctly. Lamott also stated that when she would write she would just write for example freewrite when you right without making and corrections, just writing the first thing that pops to your mind and it is possible that when you read it over you’ll get your perfect written work. When i read the title of Anne Lamott’s paper and read “shitty first draft” i was completely confused and now that i’ve read what she has to say and writing and who she is it makes me want to read one of her books, and while i read i 'm probably going to be
Although the greater picture is that reading is fundamental, the two authors have a few different messages that they seek to communicate to their audiences. “The Joy of Reading and Writing” depicts how reading serves as a mechanism to escape the preconceived notions that constrain several groups of people from establishing themselves and achieving success in their lifetimes. “Reading to Write,” on the other hand, offers a valuable advice to aspiring writers. The author suggests that one has to read, read, and read before he or she can become a writer. Moreover, he holds an interesting opinion concerning mediocre writing. He says, “Every book you pick has its own lesson or lessons, and quite often the bad books have more to teach than the good ones” (p.221). Although these two essays differ in their contents and messages, the authors use the same rhetorical mode to write their essays. Both are process analyses, meaning that they develop their main argument and provide justification for it step by step. By employing this technique, the two authors create essays that are thoughtful, well supported, and easy to understand. In addition, Alexie and King both add a little personal touch to their writings as they include personal anecdotes. This has the effect of providing support for their arguments. Although the two essays have fairly different messages, the authors make use of anecdotes and structure their writing in a somewhat similar
While preparing for one of his college lectures, Dennis Baron, a professor and linguistics at the University of Illinois, began playing with the idea of how writing has changed the world we lived in and materials and tools we use in everyday life. This lecture slowly transitioned into “Should Everybody Write?” An article that has made many wonder if technology has made writing too easy for anyone to use or strengthens a writer's ability to learn and communicate their ideas. Baron uses rhetorical strategies in his article to portray to his audience his positive tone, the contrast and comparison of context and his logical purpose.
We would do research on a subject or a person, and write about them. We, once again, were not allowed to be unique in our writing or think creatively or critically. This is the time when I was taught the five paragraph essay. As stated in Gray’s article, the five paragraph essay is detrimental to students’ writing. This format for writing is damaging because it doesn’t allow students to express their own ideas about a topic. It does not allow for any creativity or uniqueness in a paper. In tenth grade, I wrote many papers for my English class, but I never once got an A on them. I was led to believe that my writing was weak because I could not relate to what I was writing about. I did not have any emotional connection to the research papers I had to write, and it made it harder for me to write them. I had grown up not being allowed to think critically, and therefore, my papers in high school lacked creativity and deeper
However, the simplicity of writing is not always a characteristic for good writing. When people talk or write about more complex issues such as science or the environment, simple writing can be less meaning or context. The other reason simplicity may not be exemplary is because it can make people or readers confused with between simplicity and clarity whose meaning is different. When communicating and writing, not simplicity demands the high level of knowledge or technical terms to understand, but clarity does. Clarity is more important role in effective conversation and good writing because it is composed of well-organized and focuses on a particular point at a time.
Shorter, more concise sentences clarify complex ideas (Grellier & Goerke, 2015). This is the area my academic writing needs the most work. Good writing is writing that achieves its purpose by conveying the ideas in the mind of the writer to the mind of the reader with minimum confusion, distortion, and delay. In addition to the KISS principle proposed by Grellier & Goerke, (2015) I also want to focus on the ‘six Cs’ suggested by Hay, Bochner & Dungey, (2002) who state good functional writing uses the six Cs – clear, complete, concise, considerate, concrete and correct. They do however go on to state you must make your writing as accessible as possible without sacrificing depth of content or shades of meaning. I will measure my improvement
It would be foolish to claim that I have never overanalysed and disregarded conveying ideas and theories properly, in the interest of impressing my reader. Nevertheless, this aspiration indicates there is more to academic writing than simply passing information.
In our modern society, we have forgotten the art of writing. When we write, we think to ourselves, the longer the sentence, the more intelligent I will sound. Many may say it is by writing long sentences. But is it all that true? In this piece of writing I would like to focus on an essay written by Verlyn Klinkenborg, Several Short Sentences About Writing. In this essay he explains how and why when we write, we should keep our sentences short. he also explains why students should be assigned essays that are not determinate on other sources as evidence. I will also be comparing this to a piece written by Sarah Manguso, Ongoingness. I will be comparing these two pieces on their writing style, and their essayistic ideas. My belief is that we need
William Zinsser’s audience is the everyday writer. He writes for those new to writing, or those wanting a refresher on the basics. Their ages range from the young new writer to those who have been practicing their craft a while. This is evident with “But whatever your age, be yourself when you write” (25). His audience is also evident in the tone of voice of his writing for the reader. It is that of a good friend imparting knowledge, not that of a lecturer. He understands the reader is curious about the process and that they might be at any point in their lives, however, he is encouraging them to write and not be concerned about the audience.
Grabe, W. & Kaplan, R.B. (1996) Theory and practice of writing Addison Wesley Longman Limited, Harlow, Essex, England. Martlew, M. (1983) The Psychology of Written Language, Developmental and Educational Perspectives, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester, U.K. Protherough, R. (1983)
This question, posed by author Peter Elbow in his book Writing with Power, is directly at the center of the debate of writing for an audience. On one hand, by having an idea of who the audience is, the writer will be able to write in an effective way. However, there are also situations when the constant reminder of the audience will hinder the writer from creating their best work. The writer must confront the audience in his or head, safe or dangerous, in order to continue writing to the best of his or her ability.
In this executive summary, I will examine Chapter 3: Clarity from Style: Toward Clarity and Grace written by Joseph Williams. In Chapter 3, Joseph mainly discusses the importance of writing ‘clear’ sentences. Moreover, he introduces several sub-topics to support his main claim. These sub-topics include: First, the rule for writing clear sentences. Secondly, sentence structure and sentence clarity.