Revision Strategy

The shitty first draft article was pretty funny. It’s also extremely accurate. When she explains how the world seems like it’s collapsing when you start a first draft is certainly what it feels like. The daunting blank page makes you realize how incapable you are of writing, how stupid you really are! But all those anxieties begin to dissolve once you get any amount of writing onto paper. I actually tend to enjoy writing first drafts because you don’t have to judge your thoughts yet. They  just have to get onto paper, and that type of writing feels like a freeing experience. She compares it to writing like a child and writing whatever pops into your head, to me, that’s incredibly enjoyable and liberating. I wish all writing felt like that, unstructured thought throw up onto paper; unfortunately, making it organized and legible is also part of the process. I think some of my essay felt like forced writing, it didn’t excite me, but i had to meet a word requirement so I kept going. In the revision process I’d like to add more valid points and take out the old irrelevant ones. I want to elaborate on the ideas that excited me and directly related to the text and start to make strong claims and transitions. Starting out I want to highlight this idea in the intro and make the stakes high, I want the readers heart to drop, I want their hands to sweat, I want them to read it and then have to catch their breath afterwards. Surely it’s easier said than done, so I’d like to start small and fix the flow of the essay by making a shitty second outline on how the roller coaster is going to flow. Then branch ideas off of that to make concrete arguments and keep the flow in tact. Her advice to ‘trust the process’ certainly calmed my nerves and I’m ready to tackle this bad Larry.