Sh***y First Drafts
The best writing and life advice I have ever or will ever receive is from Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird.
Lamott tells her readers, “The only way I get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts”(22). She encourages everyone to do the same. Lamott’s use of the word shitty applied to my or anyone else’s writing is so self-deprecating and hilarious, it inspires, propelling me toward the laptop. When I sit down to write, every single time, I know I don’t have a great short story ready to spill, but I can bet my last dollar I have a shitty first draft in me, ready to write, today, now.
I read Lamott’s book for the first time not long after it was published, in my twenties. At that time I was single, living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, unemployed/broke, and writing a torturous master’s thesis about the modernist poet Marianne Moore. More interested in the men and drinks after class than reading literary criticism and writing papers, I was the most frayed and distracted scholar on Earth. I was granted an extension on the thesis and acquired a full time job at a library. Every day I worked until 5 PM, sat down at my computer, took a twenty minute nap over folded arms on the keyboard, quieted the evil voice of failure, and, repeating those three magic words, Shitty First Draft quietly to myself, typed a horrifyingly shitty essay which eventually became a not-so-shitty thesis which earned me my degree.
After many years of on-again, off-again shitty first drafting, I became a teacher, moved to Syracuse, New York, and began to up my game, applying the shitty first draft theory to all aspects of life. Every first date or relationship challenge was not a failure but simply a shitty first draft awaiting revision. As a teacher, lesson plans were living proof of the theory. What I designed and taught first period was more shitty than what I taught second period, then third, and so on. In my marriage to my husband, every disagreement is another shitty first draft we just need to edit and resubmit. My ten year old son is a glorious, beautiful composition, but parenting is a conveyor belt producing a steady stream of shitty first drafts. With each hurdle I reflect, gain perspective, alter my responses, choices, reactions.
And of course, most of all I use Lamott’s advice while writing. I take my writing seriously now, but not too seriously, as her call for shitty first drafting demands. I write daily, setting intentional goals and deadlines, collaborating with my writing partner, constantly rethinking, overhauling, and tweaking every draft. I have been published many times in online and print journals, websites, zines, and blogs. I have become more adept at the short story form, a frequent dabbler in speculative fiction. The shitty first draft is the crucial starting-point. I always begin this way and always will.
Thank you, Anne Lamott, for liberating every writer from the burden of perfectionism and inspiring us all to live our dreams, even if the first attempts are quite messy, even ugly or ridiculous. By telling us our shitty first drafts are a good, even necessary place to start, you have bestowed an incredibly generous gift.
Reader, you might have guessed this already, but you are reading a shitty first draft of my essay about shitty first drafts. Okay, it’s not a first draft, not as shitty as it was this morning, but it is shittier than it will be tomorrow, and that’s a hopeful, a wonderful thing.
