The First Draft

Everybody has heard of the first draft. While possibly one of the most dreaded parts of writing, it is easily the most important. Aside from the stray and admittedly poor undrafted student essay, and possibly many of the blogs scattered throughout the internet; Every substantial piece of writing you've ever read is at least in its second draft, with many of them in their 3rd or greater draft. Any composition or English teacher will tell you how important a first draft is; However, most students labored with the task of creating them for an assignment, probably having turned in first draft essays as their final and getting a decent grade, will ask why they are important. William Zinsser's Simplicity and Anne Lamott's Shitty First Drafts both share their authors view on both what it means to write a first draft, and how important a first draft is. Although written very differently and for two completely different audiences, both essays explain why first drafts are needed and how they become final drafts.

Simplicity is written in first person with an almost lecturing tone. When reading it, you feel as if your sitting in a classroom listening to your English teacher explain to you how you need to write your first draft. It's not that the paper doesn't have interesting points, just that the writing is so bland one might fall asleep while reading it. Shitty first drafts, on the other hand, is written in first person in a very comic tone. It's written in the same way one would speak, so the reader feels almost as if the seemingly very eccentric Anne Lamott is telling you the story first hand.

The main difference between these papers is that Simplicity is a paper about what your final draft should be about once you have written and distilled your first draft, whereas Shitty First Drafts explains what the purpose of your first draft is. Zinsser starts his paper explaining how American writing is full of clutter. He refers to the clutter as "the disease of American writing" and goes on to explain that many people have a hard time reading their way through any of the various memos, brochures, and instructions we are faced with every day. Shitty First Drafts starts by explaining that almost nobody likes writing a first draft, so you aren't alone if you feel the same. Anne says that she knows several great writers who make a lot of money from writing and clams that none of them sit down to write and feel very confident about what they are writing.

Simplicity concludes with explaining how the writer should remove clutter as they move through each draft of the paper, making sure that they don't include any unnecessary information. The entire article is written much in line with its title, simply. Shitty First Drafts, however, has two more parts to it. The paper moves on to explain how first drafts shouldn't be given much thought. She explains that the first draft isn't supposed to be written for anybody but yourself, and it is simply a place to get all your ideas together before you begin writing your other drafts, and eventually, your final. At the end, in direct contrast to Zinsser's philosophy, the paper takes a turn almost completely off topic, talking about how she has found ways to quiet the voices in her head telling her that what she is writing in her first draft isn't worth typing, and that she should quit while she is ahead.

While both of these papers explain the importance of a first draft, Simplicity is written with collage students, teachers, or accredited writers in mind and Shitty First Drafts is geared more towards the general public, or a high school student writing a paper. For this reason, I believe that both papers are important for their respective audiences and written well with them in mind. At a college level I would have to say that the points covered in Simplicity are more relevant to my writing. However, I feel like I am more able to connect with the points in Shitty First Drafts. In my opinion, a truly great writer will use the methods covered in both papers. Writing everything you can about a subject first, and then distilling it to its most basic, important, and informative points, should make for a very good paper.