Terrible First Drafts

Good Advice For Writing, Or For Any Project

teaching
science
workflow
Author

Andy Grogan-Kaylor

Published

September 14, 2026

I have been thinking a lot about Anne Lamott’s (Lamott, 2017) idea that:

“Every writer you know writes really terrible first drafts…”.

This seems to me to be good advice for any kind of writing, but also any kind of project in general!

We recognize that our writing, or our projects, might have first stages that seem “terrible”, but after draft after draft after draft, we often get to a stage where we think our writing or projects are pretty good!

References

Lamott, A. (2017). 12 truths I learned from life and writing. TED. https://www.ted.com/talks/anne_lamott_12_truths_i_learned_from_life_and_writing