Shitty First Drafts and Perfectionism

Without shitty first drafts, we wouldn’t have amazing finished works. Lamott hits it right on the spot when she says on page 22 “very few writers really know what they are doing until they’ve done it.” I say this because it’s not only true with writing, but it’s true with a lot of other things in life. A mother doesn’t know how to change a diaper the first few times she does it, but she eventually gets it right. A nurse isn’t going to know how to draw blood the first few times, and that’s why she has to go to school to learn how. I really love how Lamott compares the first draft to a child, how it is allowed to be wild and free with all sorts of mistakes because it is an amazing way to let our visions come through. That’s how childhood is, isn’t it; full of mistakes and we let our visions and ideas run wild as if they are real. We have to make mistakes in our first draft to get to the real idea or what it is we are really looking for. We may think we know exactly what it is that we want to write about at first, but we end up changing our mind through each new idea; much like us college students and our majors. We know what we want to major in, but we change our mind if it isn’t what we thought it would be or even if it is too hard for us.

“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people.” –Anne Lamott

They say that practice makes perfect, but they also say that nobody is perfect, so why then do we let perfection control us? By being perfect, we are not allowed to make mistakes, but by making mistakes, we shape ourselves. Our mistakes make us who we are, whether the mistake itself is small or immense. For me, I would rather be able to make mistakes in my writing than in life, because in life, we only get one chance, even though we learn from the mistake and know not to make the same one. But with our writing, we are allowed to make as many mistakes as we make, we can go back, learn from them and fix them. We should really take advantage of being able to make mistakes in our writing. It seems to be the only place where we can make them without being judged dramatically and be forgiven for.