Reading Shitty First Drafts was a reassuring experience. While I’m not as ashamed of my first drafts as she was, I often feel the same way as her, and too often I find my fingers just moving to form words without having a real direction. But this is why we have drafts. I like her friends depiction of drafts as starting with a mess and ending with a dental cleaning of a draft. I do however think that three drafts aren’t always needed. Sometimes I can overthink my writing and it turns out worse. My revision strategy will consist of not trying so hard to incorporate my own experiences and focus on the texts more, adding more textual evidence and quotes. I tried to personalize this first draft too much, which isn’t always a bad thing, but I recognize that I have to follow the material more.
I agree with your opinion on overthinking your writing. For some reason, I am just always looking for the perfect words the first time around so it takes me forever to write. However, if I read over the sentence again, I think it doesn’t sound as perfect as I thought it did and then I end up making it worse.
I thought your revision strategy was interesting because my essay was the exact opposite. I didn’t add any personal experiences which left a hole in my paper. It is definitely an important factor to our papers but the information from the outside writings is necessary to give our essays strength.
I think it is a great idea for you to add quotes to your essay! Make sure to leave some personal stuff in it though so that your essay stands out and is unique! I agree that the passage gave me some reassuring feelings too. I also agree that sometimes revising can make my essay worse, but then I think about it. I realized that when I revise I shouldn’t simply look for mistakes, but instead look for what I like and then I can change the things that are not my favorite parts of the essay. This way, I make sure to keep what is good and know that everything can get better and usually it works. I think that if you are confident in your essay, which from this blog post you seem to be, you will do great! Good luck!!