Orwell's essay helped me understand the crutches that many writers use. To my dismay I found that many of the bad traits that he outlined were traits of my own. Many times I have used words that have no purpose other that to take up space. These space fillers can also be metaphors that are very cliche and don't illustrate the point more effectively. These flaws are more common in early student writing because they feel that they cannot write their essays long enough. Instead of thinking of new things to say, that will take up more space and not be redundant, they add filler and stay on the safe side.
This is why everone should write their rough drafts as Lamott does. She gets all the information down first and then shapes it into a cohesive whole. It is much better to trim the excess than fill in the spaces with garbage.