Journal Three: Shitty First Drafts

I like to believe great writers just sit down and let all their ideas come to them, perfect from their brain to the page, down to the last period. This fantasy makes me feel better about some of the first drafts I have turned in, somehow making them more acceptable as essays. I know this is clearly not the case, professional writers spend ridiculous amount of time on their pieces, reading, editing, rewriting, and repeating. I personally feel like I have never gotten that system down, or found the right editing system for myself. I mean I have edited in classes and on my own, correcting big grammatical and spelling mistakes, as well as taking out sentences and rearranging words to provide more clarity or make a point more impactful. I haven’t ever printed out my work and cut it up then rearranged it, or taken colored pencil to it and moved words and phrases around. Most of the time I just sit down, with my handwritten outline, and write my essay. I suppose you could say I edit as I go (I went back and corrected some things just now) but I really feel like I can’t get as into the editing process as others do. I can’t decide if its because I don’t want to spend the time on the pieces I wrote in high school, or if it was more that I was scared to really look at my writing. Thinking about it now, it was definitely that I didn’t want to spend all the time I think real editing is on essays that I didn’t really care about. I definitely have a writing process, which I trust warily; the outline, then the introduction (my favorite part, I could write intro’s all day), then some fiddling around, a few more sentences, going for a walk, getting inspired for write another paragraph, checking Facebook, and then getting disgusted with how little I have done and cranking out the rest, ending with a conclusion I hate, no matter what it is. Reading this article, and talking to a friend that is a creative writing major, has helped me realize how much of an art writing really is. “Sometimes I just can’t write,” she said, and this friend of mine writes like its her job already, anything and everywhere, and I think it’s the same when I just can’t think of an idea for an architecture project, I can’t build or draw, or even think. But for every architecture project, I end up with a stack of about one hundred crap designs, junky cardboard models, and a million different ideas which I continually revise and change until one is perfect for the project specifications. I think I am willing to spend the time on it because I love the project, and the more I work on it the better it gets, and the better I feel. I am hoping that with more freedom in choosing my topics in college, I’ll like my writing more, and be willing to revise it more, completely tear it apart and built it back up, making it stronger than ever.