Annotated bibliography of "Shitty First Drafts"

In the passage “Shitty First Drafts” by Anne Lamott from Bird by Bird, the author promotes that “shitty first drafts” are the key to most successful pieces of writing. Lamott indicates that most writers have “shitty first drafts” and that “all good writers write them”(21.) In order to have a good piece of writing one must vomit all of their ideas onto paper. Lamott’s friend calls it the down draft (25.) In this draft you should get all your thoughts down, even if you sound like a child (22.

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The first draft isn’t going to make much sense but it doesn’t matter because no one is going to see it(23.) With this “down draft” you can edit it and organize your thoughts into the up draft (25.) “The up draft” is where you take all the good things from “the down draft” and write an organized draft that makes much more sense. “You try to say what you have to say more accurately”(25.

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After that comes the dental draft, a draft where you nit-pick and refine every aspect of the writing, like how a dentist would “check every tooth, to see if it were loose or cramped or decayed”(25,26.) Hopefully the final product is a “healthy” piece of writing. Lamott successfully argued that a “shitty first draft” is the beginning to a great piece of writing so you just “need to start somewhere”(25,26.)