On Life as a Sarcastic Fringehead

I ran across a blog called shitty first draft yesterday. There was a quote by writer Anne Lamott saying that everybody has shitty first drafts...that's how you get to the good second, third and fourth drafts.

I lifted from 43 Folders an excerpt from Lamott's Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life:

"For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts.

"The first draft is the child’s draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later. You just let this childlike part of you channel whatever voices and visions come through and onto the page. If one of the characters wants to say, “Well, so what, Mr. Poopy Pants?,” you let her. No one is going to see it. If the kid wants to get into really sentimental, weepy, emotional territory, you let him. Just get it all down on paper, because there may be something great in those six crazy pages that you would never have gotten to by more rational, grown-up means. There may be something in the very last line of the very last paragraph on page six that you just love, that is so beautiful or wild that you now know what you’re supposed to be writing about, more or less, or in what direction you might go — but there was no way to get to this without first getting through the first five and a half pages."

I love that line about how no one is going to see my Mr. Poopy Pants line. Not exactly true for me since I'm posting as I'm writing. It goes something like this: think, write, post. Trying to get it all down, but my shitty first draft is available for anyone who chooses to read it. But I'm writing it and that's the important part. Getting it down. No matter what.

Going against my life long habits, in this space, I am unafraid for people to see my mistakes. But, wait, not spelling errors, though. Or typos. I may have a prepositional phrase or subjunctive clause issue here or there, but for the most part, my shitty first draft should be free from clerical malevolence. I don't think I'm any more anal about that than any other writer.