After reading Lamott’s piece, I can say that my thoughts on the writing process has changed slightly. I had an English teacher in high school who was obsessed with the idea of writing outlines for every essay/piece of writing we had to do, which I dreaded doing. Because of her, instead of embracing the idea of writing outlines and using them, I actually hated writing outlines and never used them (even in times where they would probably have been very useful). I tend to just go headfirst into my essay with just having a “big picture” idea and write as my thoughts come along. I guess this is similar to Lamott’s approach to writing. However, as I write, I have a habit of refining my sentences as I finish writing each paragraph or big main idea. By doing this, the flow of my papers probably isn’t as smooth as they could be rather than me just emptying out all my thoughts in one go. If I follow Lamott’s ways and just write whatever pops into my head without thinking of conventions or anything, I could use my first draft as a more organic version of an outline to help better sort and structure my essay for future revisions.
As I mentioned before, I’m not very used to having a super rough, messy first draft, like a first draft was meant to be. However, after reading this, I realized that the first draft is just what it is, a first draft and I should take advantage of it to just pour whatever ideas I have out. Whether these ideas make sense or not, I can take those ideas and refine them later to help create a solid final product in the end.
