First Shitty Drafts response

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Writing a terrible first draft is something that through my middle school and early high school drafts was encouraged and often required, however the last two years of high school we did almost exclusively timed writing, in which there is clearly no time to write a first draft. While timed writings have forced me to analyze and respond to passages quickly I haven't had much recent practice with crafting a polished piece of writing. Writing a first “shitty” draft does remind me of how I would spend the first five minutes during a timed writing of planning prior to writing my actual plan for my essay, these 5 minutes were basically writing down every random thought that popped into my head that could vaguely related to the given prompt. The author is transparent in this passage, she says how it is difficult for even professional writers to work on their pieces. It is comforting to know that I am not only in often feeling as if I have to force my writing in regards to certain topics and papers. The comparison of writing feeling like pulling teeth is how I often felt responding to poems written prior to the 1500s during timed writings in high school.  However if I had been able to first write a “shitty” draft in response to such poems I may have had a different view of such poems. Overall I am looking forward to no longer being critically judges on something that I am forced to write in 40 minutes, but rather a work that I can spend time on, revise, and look at with a fresh set of eyes; something that can blossom from a first "shitty" draft to a piece of writing that I can be proud of. 

Comments

  1. UnknownSeptember 2, 2017 at 11:27 AM

    I agree and experienced the same thing in High school with the timed writings. It feels like they did more harm than good in terms of having a personal writing style.

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  2. UnknownSeptember 2, 2017 at 2:44 PM

    I can relate to having timed writing in high school. I agree with you that it is clearly not enough time to plan and create a paper.

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  3. UnknownSeptember 3, 2017 at 11:44 AM

    I agree that the timed writings in school made it very difficult to write a great paper, however, I believe that the time crunch did help us write down all of our thoughts onto paper as fast as possible. So, in a sense, those timed writings were basically our first drafts that could definitely be tweaked if we had gotten them back.

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  4. UnknownSeptember 3, 2017 at 7:53 PM

    I completely agree with your comments about timed writing assignments. Due to standardized testing, I was never given many opportunities to revise my essays, so I would always have to accept the first draft I wrote. I am excited to have a little bit of freedom now to rewrite my thoughts.

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  5. UnknownSeptember 4, 2017 at 12:13 PM

    I 100% agree to the fact that you are not given enough time to write a well written essay or a response in the timed writing in high school. I also believe that it could possibly hinder our writing abilities and does not truly express our true skills.

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  6. UnknownSeptember 4, 2017 at 1:19 PM

    I agree that it is exciting to have the opportunity to go back to writing drafts and improving our writing until you are proud of it. Drafts seemed to be forgotten about in the later years of high school.

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  7. Camille VilelaSeptember 13, 2017 at 2:15 PM

    Hi Leah
    Thank you for sharing your previous writing experience. Sounds like "timed-writing" doesn't really work for you. What's interesting about first drafts is that you get to pour all your ideas and don't worry about structure or form then. It's a non-judgemental step onto improving your essay.You should consider adding it to your writing process. And it doesn't have to be timed :)

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