I think that Lamott is saying that it’s all about the process rather than the product when it comes to writing a first draft. One thing that she repeats throughout the entire reading is that nobody is going to see her first draft except for her. If nobody else is going to read your work or be able to critique it, then how “good” or “bad” it is doesn’t matter in the long run. I can confidently say that I am a perfectionist when it comes to the majority of my life. I hate when I have to turn something in, feeling as if it isn’t the best that it could be. A lot of the time I feel that this is why rough drafts are so hard for me. I spend so much time trying to make every sentence that I type perfect, that I end up spending hours on a single page. I think that Lamott makes a strong point in her writing by showing that first drafts don’t have to be good, they just have to be something. You can’t create a great product in the end if you don’t have anything to start off with. This is why she calls the first draft the “down draft” where all you have to do is get something written down. The second draft, or the “up draft” is where you can go through and fix things up. I think this is very important to remember because not everything that is written down has to be brilliant right away. As long as you have some idea of what you’re trying to say to your audience, then jotting down your thoughts as they come to you should be helpful, and you shouldn’t try to change them. In the end the ideas that seemed stupid when you were writing them down may end up being some of the best points in your final piece. Simply getting anything down on paper is the best thing that you can do to give your product the most potential and make it amazing in the end.
