Jose Luis Arredondo

Instructor. McCann

English 1301-125

September 15, 2023

Writing is Complicated

In Annie Lamott’s essay “Shitty First Drafts” she gives possibly the best writing advice ever

when she says, “Very few writers really know what they’re doing until they’ve done it,” as the

message behind this advice is very straight forward. What Lamott really means by this saying is

that it’s naturally to feel unsure of yourself when you’re going through your first few drafts as

they’re not really meant to be the finished product; instead, they’re really meant to act as a guide

towards that finished product, which you can finally be sure of once its actualized. When it

comes to these drafts Lamott identifies three of them. Lamott calls the first the “child’s draft”

and characterizes it as sort of the brainstorm of your writing where you just let your ideas go

wild. It’s not necessarily meant to have any structure or to have a huge impact on the finished

product, it’s simply to see what’ll work and what won’t in your piece of writing. The