I loved reading “Shitty First Drafts” by Anne Lamott. I wish if I read this before I began my first drafts because I believe I did not write down all my thoughts as she recommended. It surprised me that professional writers still go through this process. I think it’s good to know that the first draft should be more of a word vomit than a structured essay. I learned that I should put whatever comes to my mind, while writing my first draft, onto the paper. I am really going to work on doing this for the next essay I write.
Revision Plan Strategy: Revision is the most important part of an essay, I believe. You can never have an amazing essay without multiple revisions. For my own revision, my main goal is to emphasize my points and take out unnecessary sentences and words.
The way I am going to meet my goals is by first reading my essay and go through and focus on what my peers stated was important to do. I will then go through and add more quotes and supporting arguments to my essay. Then, I will go through it again and focus on what needs to be taken out, what isn’t important.
I will be focusing on other things like, producing a stronger thesis, connecting each paragraph to my thesis, grammar, and more. These are important, but the ideas in the paragraph before are more important to me.
I think the biggest challenge for me while I am producing this essay is going to be adding more detail. In high school I had a very low word max, so I focused on the absolute most important topics and would try to explain them as short as possible. But now, I have a much higher word max so I am able to add as much detail as I would like. This difference is a little hard to get over, but hopefully by next essay I will be better.
If I am unable to meet the word count requirements and can’t produce as much detail as I would like, I am going to reach out to our writing fellow, Sarah, and ask her for suggestions on what I should add to my essay. I also could go to SASC and seek help there as well. I am extremely excited to see how my final draft of my essay turns out, and hopefully I can reach all my goals!
