To be honest I never write a first draft unless I was told to write one. As bad as that sounds I just personally don’t write one. I might brainstorm a list of topics then pick the topic that fits the theme more along with how much I can go on and on about said topic. I would normally wait until two weeks before  the essay is due. Spending 2-3 days researching similar works to the topic to get a feel on how it should look like and getting information. Then spend another 2-3 days writing. Once that’s done I look through the piece proofreading ,adding or getting rid of things. Then I copy and paste the essay to a text to speech website to hear the flow of the essay and to see if I have any errors. Changing things when needed and then repeating the text to speech thing before submitting to see if I need to add or fix things.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eeES3bym8yqKDrPlCbz5vhSSQZnhCLjkowTIsl8kk1w/edit?usp=sharing