Shitty First Draft

When Lamott uses the phrase "shitty first draft" she is referring to the first horribly written paper that writers, even professional ones, write. This is the paper on which you write down your initial ideas, even if you write them incoherently. Your ideas do not even necessarily have to go anywhere. The first draft is the one that no one will see. Your writing can even be childish; it doesn't matter for a first draft--you write whatever you want. It can also be way longer than it should be. It is really just a very unedited version of the paper. Sometimes shitty first drafts help you realize what you actually want to write about. After you write your first draft, you clean it up for your final draft. She writes, "Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts . . . A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft--you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft-- you fix it up . . . And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it's loose or cramped or decayed, or even" (2). I fix up my shitty first drafts by taking the advice that has been written on my papers. For example, I added a paragraph to my literature review and I made corrections to my works cited page. I will continue taking advice from Dr. Seloni and Bee to make my paper as good as I can.