Journal three

In the excerpt “Shitty First Drafts” it talks about getting your feelings and ideas out on paper and expressing how you see and feel about different situations. Lamott mentions a process that works exceptionally well. When someone experiences a situation whether they like it or not it creates a memory but when they create it they don’t run it through there mind in and organized way, they think of the highlights and branch off of it. That is how it is when you’re writing the first draft. One just wants to get there ideas out on paper and make sure you have all the high and low points of what one is writing about. Lamott calls it a “down draft”, which means everything that your thinking about goes on paper whether it makes sense to everybody or just you.

The second draft is about taking your first draft and revising to make sense in a way that is understandable and that it flows and doesn’t just bounce from idea to idea. This is called the “up draft”. I think of it, as you have to up your game by making it sound and flow like a song.

The third draft is the masterpiece or so you hope so. It is a draft that is proof read time after time checking to see if things have to be cut or moved around. Lamott calls it the dental draft. We all know what happens at the dentist, it may be good how it is but there is always room for improvement.

I feel that Lamott recommends this because if you try to write perfect the first time you might leave out ideas that mean the most to you because you don’t know how they would fit right then and there. By getting ideas out on paper lets your mind wander explore things that is there but you just don’t have time to recognize that the idea is there.

I personally use a method that is similar but I usually need more than just three drafts. I like to write until things can’t be moved, cut or changed, even though there is still probably room for change. When I think of things I want to write about my brain bounce from one thing to another but if I write it all done I know that it is hard to forget about all the things that happened to me in the situation I was in.