Blog Post #2

Writing is a skill that rarely comes natural to most people, and limited amounts of time does it all flow out perfectly. Similar to life it is uncommon for people to perform actions flawlessly; in Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird she relates this to writing Shitty First Drafts and promotes laying it all out on the table and revising from there. This article relates to the ups and downs of perfecting a paper, similar to the baking of a cake in my eyes. When you begin to bake your cake, you must start at the bottom, building the foundation. We all know preparation of the batter is messy and tiresome, you must accumulate all your ingredients, measure everything out, pour it all into a bowl, stir it all together for 3 tiresome drawn-out minutes to create your consistency, and stick your liquid cake in the oven. Lamott encourages to lay everything out on the table, your first draft is always the messiest, most tiresome, prolonged piece which you dread the most when beginning to write. However, similar to baking a cake, it gets better. When your cake is finally ready to come out of the oven and has cooled down you must decorate it, at first you slap on an entire pint of frosting which can also be frustrating and enjoyably messy, but you work your way through it and create a nice smooth layer of sugary deliciousness. Lamott in relation describes the second draft as the fixer upper, after you’ve laid everything out on the table, it is time for some clean up; and following is your final draft which results in perfection at its’ finest. After 20 long minutes of smoothing out your frosting, creating winsome decorations, and pouring a whole bottle of sprinkles on the top, your cake is now perfect and ready to be presented. Nobody is expected to sit down and write a paper flawlessly, the key to success in Lamott’s eyes is to get everything out of your brain and onto paper in order to figure out the direction and more or less what you’re writing about.