Blisters.

Appropriately enough, I first had the pleasure of reading Anne Lamott's "Shitty First Drafts" in my First-Year Writing class at Belmont.

And, also appropriately, I had the same reaction today that I did two and a half years ago. My first question was: "Who is the author who can sit down and write perfectly on the first draft, and how can I be like her?" I suppose this reaction suggests some amount of laziness on my part for wanting to be able to skip ahead and avoid the first draft stage. Forgive me my impatience: I am an American, after all, and therefore prone to an addiction to efficiency.

My methods for counteracting this lethargic tendency are scattered, at best, but I often remind myself of the lessons I learned in my ballet days. Please indulge the following lines about my history in the art... I was intensely involved in ballet from the age of nine until I was nineteen. You would think that after a full decade of sweat, blisters, and sore muscles I would have perfected the art. And yet I still had to take ballet class six days a week and attend endless rehearsals. In the summers I attended elite intensive ballet schools in Boston and Seattle in hopes of further honing my skills. While all of these experiences were wonderful

on many levels, there were also many exceedingly painful moments. More often than not I was tired and injured. Many days I was forced to wrap my toes in layers of tape and second skin (a burn relief substance that proved very helpful in protecting blisters) in hopes of preventing the formation of any more blisters while dancing in my pointe shoes. Despite all the pain, the feeling of being en pointe was completely worth it. My point (pun intended) is: the same is true in ballet as is true in writing. Blisters are the "shitty first drafts" of ballet. I endured them and ended up in the picture to the right.

Moral of my rambling: "shitty first drafts" are absolutely necessary to achieve a graceful and worthy finished product. It is impossible to produce a polished piece of prose or poetry unless you are willing to withstand some blisters along the way.