The Writing/Editing Process

The week's readings concerned, primarily, the writing and editing process. It starts with "Shitty First Drafts" by Anne Lamott, in which Lamott lays out the process by which she functions and where she assumes most writers are coming from. This includes, as she so eloquently puts it, the shitty first draft. I myself have had many experiences with this, mostly because everyone, since elementary school, has expected me to put out a first draft. When I was younger, I did not struggle with the writing process as my teacher had always expected me to so after I had written my nearly perfect draft, I would go back and write an unpolished, missing pieces, awful first draft so that I could turn something in and "make edits" for the third/final draft that I would have to turn in eventually. Lamott does hit a very valid point however in her push through method when she says, "Just get it all down on paper, because there may be something great in those six crazy pages that you would never have gotten...[otherwise]". Sometimes, especially when writing fiction pieces, I get so hung up on the mid-editing process that I lose what I want to happen in the end of my story. I get so lost in the middle of the piece that I can't remember what the end goal was. This is the flaw in George Dila's "Rethinking the Shitty First Draft" rebuttal. He likens writing a story to building a house, saying that if you just blunder through making the house with little regard for fixing the issues as you go you will end up with a less than worthy house. I take a different perspective when facing this issue. I think that if you liken writing a piece to building a house then for me, somewhere in the middle of laying the brick work I get so focused on making all the bricks parallel that I forget what I was supposed to be doing next. Now this analogy isn't perfect because everyone knows the basic format of a house, but you can catch my drift.

The other parts of this reading focus on the editing part, making what you have already written more persuasive. The Praxis text focuses on making your writing more simple, concise, and direct. This is something I am very familiar with in my major and prospective career. Being a lawyer you need to realize that everything is on a time limit, whether hard line or not, your jury or judge is only going to have a limited time in which they are willing to pay attention. Making your speech more clear and concise allows you to get through more of the issue in less time with more potency. I have been told time and time again, understanding your audience is very important when choosing your words and sentence structure. For me, I am always told that the average jury member has an 8th grade education so to gear my processing towards a more simple and concise target.

All in all, I understand the thought process that drove all three of these pieces but I think the two personal pieces, i.e. Lamott and Dila, need ought to consider more, that the creative process cannot have a clear and formulaic pattern for what will work for everyone. Personally, I often use a mix of the two processes.