The Vomit Draft
Photo by Clarissa Watson on Unsplash
by Albert L.
One of the reasons why I like running on a treadmill is that I can stare lasers at the mile counter. I know exactly how much distance I have left to sweat before the pain will end.
Similarly, some of you might find pleasure in the gamifying the word count feature of your word processor as you creep towards the end. There’s of course a word count, 650 words for the Common App Essay.
However, writing is not merely filling the page with words until we finish. The qualitative nature of what makes a good essay goes beyond a simple binary test of whether an essay is “finished” or not.
The most important thing to do in the first draft is to just finish. Students’ approaches to their first drafts can vary and I’m going to analyze ways that can be done.
Free Write
This is where you just take a topic and just write whatever comes in your head.
This kind of writing can lead to surprising elements. New ideas might pop in your head if you have the freedom to explore.
However, free writing can also be incredibly inefficient if your story doesn’t have structure or purpose. The college essay is not a journal entry of unformed thoughts. You should have a sense of what your values are and how you can demonstrate that through story. The essay shouldn’t be an exploration of your neuroses, indecision, and search for meaning. You should have that already resolved or figured out for your college essay.
Outline
I work with my students to outline their stories before they begin writing. That way your story is structured in a way that is always written with the express purpose to highlight their values.
Using an outline doesn’t mean you can’t veer off track to interesting side notes about yourself. However, having a goal to write towards can actually be freeing and make writing the first draft less intimidating.
I’d recommend for students to not worry about the quality of the first draft too much. Writers will often call this the vomit draft. Just expel everything onto the page, knowing that there’s a pretty good chance that a lot of what you wrote will be a mess.
I believe overwriting the first draft is preferable to underwriting. Oftentimes, students are so used to turning in assignments with a certain set of criteria, that they’ll treat their rough drafts way too.
The writing process is a lot more meandering and fickle than just creating a checklist of ‘I’m within the word count.’ The first draft should really be about exploration of the topic. If you take extra words to get that out, that’s okay. You can always cut later. Students will sometimes approach the word count and then try to shoehorn a rushed conclusion which always makes the story feel imbalanced. If you don’t get to fully express yourself because of a word count, you’re only going to have to end up writing that in later drafts anyways.
Lastly, DO NOT CENSOR YOURSELF. Allow your natural voice to shout through the page. If you feel the ghosts of your previous English teachers haunting you about the use of contractions or making sure you have clear topic sentences, exorcise them.
Don’t worry so much about your first draft being terrible. The point of the first draft is to give form to what your essay and ideation. You can always edit your next drafts.
However, if you silence your thoughts before you can even put them onto paper, you risk losing the heart and soul of your essay. You want to surprise the readers, and not write something that feels overly manicured that comes across as an Essay Narwhal that is afraid to take risks.
