Hey kiddo! Have you ever read a really good story and wondered how the author made it so awesome? That’s what Mike Bunn talks about in his essay about reading like a writer. He says we should look at books the same way we look at a cool Lego castle someone else built. We need to check out exactly how they put the blocks together, so we can learn how to build our own amazing castle!
Then, there’s Anne Lamott’s idea of "shitty first drafts". She means that when you write your very first version of a story, it is supposed to be messy, and there is nothing wrong with it. She writes, "The first draft is the child's draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later". Think of it like dumping all your toys on the bedroom floor before you start playing. The floor becomes a huge mess, but nobody is judging you. You are just getting all your ideas out, so you can organize them and build something great.
In my own writing process, I treat my first drafts a lot like how I build Small Form Factor PCs. The first time I put the motherboard and parts together and place them into a tiny ITX case. It is a complete mess. Cables are everywhere, and it looks terrible. It's my rough first draft. But once all the parts are safely inside, I can manage the cables neatly, and optimize the system until it runs flawlessly. Writing is the exact same way that I just need to get the parts on the page first before I make it look good.