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Veniamin Stupin
Prof. Melton
ENGL 5
February 26, 2016
The Draft that Made IT!
Writing can be a rough course for many students. Students and many writers today put in
a lot of time into their writing which may turn out to be a famous work of art! As Anne Lamott
states in her essay Bird by Bird, We all often feel like we are pulling teeth, even those writers
whose prose ends up being the most natural and fluid (Lamott, 22). At the beginning, writing is
intense and cramps up your brain and that is how I feel when I write essays. In this essay, Ill talk
about a paper I wrote for my English 11 class in high school and the process I went through to
get it done.
Most writing assignment in high school and college are given with a prompt and that
gives the student an idea of where to start. The prompt is a usually a big task for many writers
because it is a hard process but all of us have to go through it to make our writing great.
Personally all my first drafts were horrible and especially the first paragraphs because most of
the time they were nothing but random ideas that came to my head to actually start the
assignment. Many great writers talk about how their famous pieces of work didnt come straight
from the top of their head but took a lot of errors and Lamott posits this in her book by saying,
Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by
getting something--- anything--- down on paper (Lamott 25). That is exactly what I did for my
essay on community service which I did in 11th grade of high school. The rough draft wasnt

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great at all but it helped me start somewhere and that lead me to write four more rough drafts on
that assignment.
One of the main and important things to start with is the prewriting process. It can just be
thoughts inside the writers head which will never be seen or heard of. In Write Before Writing,
Donald M. Murray writes The prewriting process is largely invisible; it takes place within the
writers head or on scraps of paper that are rarely publish (Murray 381). This is how I began
after I have read the prompt of the essay and it truly does help greatly.
Once I actually started my essay, or shall I say the first sentence, I made an outline so it
would help me write the thesis of the essay and the main points I had in my head that connected
to the thesis. Only then did I start writing my first paragraph. On the essay, I started writing how
I speak to not make it sound like writing. Elmore Leonard, an American novelist, once wrote If
it sounds like writing, I rewrite it (Elmore Leonard). That is exactly what I did with most of my
paragraph for that essay, I went and rewrote those using different words or ways on saying
something like instead of using the term a lot, I changed it to a plethora. That is what helped
me get creative with my essay and change how its written.
Writing a rough draft can help greatly especially when you have someone that can read it
over for you and see what is wrong with it. While writing that essay for the class, my teacher
offered us a writing workshop after school where we could come and get some help with our
essays and that is what I did! At first I didnt think it was a good idea because I used to just write
the essay the day before and not think about it much after that. This was different though, I
noticed that it would help me get a better grade because the person that is helping me write my
essay is going to grade it! Which means that I can see what he expects from my essay. This also
meant that I was going against myself but as Murray says in his book, The Makers Eye, Writers

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must learn to be their own best enemy (Murray 57) and that is exactly what I did, I went against
myself and gave the paper to the teacher for revision even though I didnt like to do that. After
my teacher read it multiple times, he gave me some advice and notes on the side of my paper that
made it easier for me to go back and see what I have in my paper and what I need to add/delete.
My teacher providing me with these notes helped me start my own revision on the paper.
I took most of his notes seriously and actually focused greatly on them while revising my paper.
After about a week or so going back and forth on each sentence change words, flipping things
around I finally got to the point where I could write my conclusion! It felt great to actually come
to a point where you know you finished writing and editing the drafts. So I went to write the
conclusion and personally that was the simplest part because all my English teachers that I ever
had taught me that to write the conclusion, you just have to take the introduction, put it in other
words, and put it down on paper, and thats exactly what I did. Then to clean things up I wrote
my final draft paper. The next day I went and turned it in to my teacher, with the four rough
drafts that I wrote before writing the final. I ended up getting an A for that essay with 97% due to
having some grammar mistakes, etc. but I was happy with that
In conclusion, the prewriting process, first draft, and editing are all steps that each writer
should take to write a successful final paper. Even though writing a paper can be rough, sitting
behind a table or desk and writing something down can lead to a great work of art. I learned
through that essay that putting in effort into something will give a great reward and that is what I
got. Hard work pays off when effort goes into it.

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Works Cited
Murray, Donald M. The Makers Eye: Revising Your Own Manuscripts. The McGraw-Hill
Reader: Issues Across the Disciplines. Ed. Gilbert H. Muller. New York: CUNY, 2002.
56-60.
Murray, Donald M. Write Before Writing. College Composition and Communication Vol.29,
No. 4. (Dec., 1978), pp. 375-381.
Lamott, Ann. Shitty First Drafts. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. New
York: Pantheon, 1994. 21-27.
Leonard, Elmore. "Elmore Leonards 10 Rules of Writing." Brain Pickings. MARIA POPOVA,
21 Aug. 2013. Web. 18 Feb. 2016.