I am a bit surprised by how the reading starts with the idea that we should have a shitty first draft to have a good second and great third draft. From elementary to middle school I was under the impression that to write a good story or essay your first draft had to be relatively good. This reading kinda helps me feel better about the future of my writing as I always felt burnt out trying to write a good first draft while in elementary and more so in high school. The way Anne explains the first draft is to have all your ideas related to the topic on paper and to mold it into the proper format. She also says the writing shouldn’t be perfect and on occasion, the first draft tends to be longer than the final draft. She then annotates her work to find what makes sense and what could be made clear and what isn’t necessary for the article then make her second draft. I feel like this is such an obvious concept and I honestly feel stupid for not realizing this, figuring out this technique would’ve helped me out a lot in high school when I would panic if my essay wasn’t strong enough. Maybe I’m just stubborn and want to get it right the first time.
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