{"id":3084,"date":"2015-05-27T21:35:00","date_gmt":"2015-05-28T01:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/?p=3084"},"modified":"2015-05-27T21:35:00","modified_gmt":"2015-05-28T01:35:00","slug":"drafts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/?p=3084","title":{"rendered":"Better Than Our First Drafts"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"100_8884\"<\/a>The subject line in an emailed draft of a paper on Pride and Prejudice<\/em> I received earlier this year read, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Sorry so late, not my best work.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Naturally, in my response I often send to students to let them know I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve received their emails, I wrote, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Got it. Sounds promising.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Because, you know.<\/p>\n

With my responsibilities this year coordinating the writing lab at our school, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve spent a good deal of my time working with seniors on their college application essays. Some of the topics colleges want students to expound on can be pretty bizarre, like \u00e2\u20ac\u0153To tweet or not to tweet,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153How do you feel about Wednesdays?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You have 150 words. Take a risk.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Often, however, the most challenging essay is the personal statement. Students struggle with how to define themselves, and often resort to writing their resume in paragraph format rather than focusing on something about themselves not included on other parts of the application. They don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know how to make themselves stand out, or how to tell about an experience that encapsulates who they are. In their defense, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s often because they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve never tried to do it.<\/p>\n

Last fall, one particular student came to me for help with her personal statement. She was bright, articulate, and beautiful, so at this point in life, the world was her oyster. But as I sat reading her well-written draft, I kept thinking, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Almost everything is fine about this. Technically, it only needs minor alterations. So what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bothering me about it?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

As we began to discuss it, I realized what it was.<\/p>\n

Her essay was<\/em> fine; it was everything you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d expect it to be. She had all the things going for her that you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d want to have going for you, and she wrote with intelligence and clarity.<\/p>\n

But it was off.<\/p>\n

Not because it was bad, because it wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t. It was good.<\/p>\n

It was off because of her<\/em>. It was off because she is better than her essay. She is, simply put, better than her first draft.<\/p>\n

Of writing, Hemingway reportedly said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

I won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even tell you what he said about first drafts.<\/p>\n

But the truth is that there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a reason for the bleeding. Because, after all the hemorrhaging ends, when we wipe away the mess, sometimes, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something there that stuns even ourselves.<\/p>\n

Something in our final drafts stuns us, but not because a hundred drafts have culminated in something better than or brighter than us.<\/p>\n

It stuns us because it is<\/em> us.<\/p>\n

We just never knew it, until we put to words and wrestled words and cursed words and erased words and stared at the space where words once were until we told ourselves we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d never write words again, that these final drafts are us.<\/em><\/p>\n

So, we could settle for our first drafts, and it might be just fine. But imagine never getting a chance to see our final ones.<\/p>\n

This draft to be continued\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The subject line in an emailed draft of a paper on Pride and Prejudice I received earlier this year read, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Sorry so late, not my best work.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Naturally, in my response I often send to students to let them know I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve received their emails, I wrote, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Got it. Sounds promising.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Because, you know. With my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1023,1],"tags":[1937,1936,105,100,1938,1935,1934],"class_list":["post-3084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-islandlife","tag-college-application-writing","tag-high-school-writing","tag-island-life","tag-island-living","tag-island-writing","tag-writing-beyond-the-first-draft","tag-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3084\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}