Response to Orwell and Lamott Essays

After reading Orwell's Essay, Shitty First Drafts, i agreed with everything he had to say.  My Sophomore English teacher taught me essentially the same technique, only she phrased it differently. She said to figuratively, "Throw up all over the paper on your first draft." When I write essays or any paper I often find myself with that feeling Orwell described, the feeling of being stuck and not getting anything started. But this technique actually makes me feel as if I am accomplishing something, despite the fact that what you I am writing might be really terrible. Another way of thinking about this technique is that it eliminates the fear of failure from writing. You know beforehand that what you are writing is going to be shitty, so your not afraid of writing something shitty.  When you take the fear of failure out, it becomes fun.  I play baseball and this same concept applies there and in any other sport.  To quote Babe Ruth, "Never let the fear of striking out get in your way."

Although less interesting than the article by Orwell, Politics and the English Language had its solid points.  The last part of the essay in which Lamott describes a concrete set of rules to write by was the part that I got the most out of, because the rest of it was hard to follow.  I did agree with much of what Lamott was saying about the English language and how people use it.  Most of the points Lamott made in his article sounded good while I was reading them but I did not really take anything away from it.  The best part of his article was the set of rules he laid out at the end.