“Shitty First Drafts”

In the two texts, “Shitty First Drafts” by Anne Lamott and “Rethinking the Shitty First Draft” by George Dila, there are two very different perspectives. On one hand, Lamott says that every writer writes bad first drafts. Eventually, the next drafts will get better and later be the best version of your writing. She states that there is no writing without bad drafts and that we as writers should pour everything out into our first draft and fix it up in the others. On the other hand, Dila says that not all writers have the careless first draft where they’re saying whatever is on their mind, and that personally, he revises his first draft to perfection. Dila completely disagrees with Lamott and actually references her multiple times in his writing. For example, Dila states, “popularized by Anne Lamott, offends me—both the idea of thinking of my own work this way, and also that word itself, shitty, to my ear an ugly and repellent adjective.” With this, Dila seems almost offended that she would use the word “shitty” when talking about everybody’s first writing. With these two opinions on first drafts, I don’t know where I stand. Personally, I don’t like to write multiple drafts of one writing but I feel as though that method leads to a better final draft. I agree with Lamott in the sense that you could pour out everything and fix it to perfection later on. Nonetheless, I do agree with Dila that the word “shitty” isn’t the ideal word to use for writings, but I don’t believe we should revise the same writing over until we’re happy with it.