Top 59 Quotes About First Drafts
#1. You have to get something down, and then find ways of working in complexity and different layers of meaning ... My first drafts are usually the ravings of a delusional fantasist.
Peter Wolf
#2. There are writers whose first drafts are so lean, so skimpy, that they must go back and add words, sentences, paragraphs to make their fiction intelligible or interesting. I don't know any of these writers.
Nancy Kress
#3. I don't have a schedule, but I can write for hours non-stop. If I'm drafting a book, I try and do a chapter a day. I dislike first drafts. Revision is a lot more fun, but it takes years.
Sefi Atta
#4. I am a hopeless pantser, so I don't do much outlining. A thought will occur to me, and I'll just throw it into the story. I tell myself I'll worry about untangling it later. I'm glad no one sees my first drafts except for my poor editor and agent.
Marie Lu
#5. Once I start writing, I am a huge reviser. To me writing is revising. I probably turn over every sentence that I write, to see if I have the rhythm right. That's why my first drafts take a really long time.
Matt De La Pena
#6. All first drafts suck, so get it over already.
Jeff Goins
#8. Elizabeth Hardwick told me once that all her first drafts sounded as if a chicken had written them. So do mine for the most part.
Flannery O'Connor
#9. We are all continually embarking on first drafts, in every aspect of our lives.
Jules Feiffer
#10. For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous.
In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write
really, really shitty first drafts.
Anne Lamott
#11. Good first drafts and speedy responses to consumer dialog will always trump lawyered corporate speak.
John Battelle
#12. The bottom line is that I like my first drafts to be blind, unconscious, messy efforts; that's what gets me the best material.
Jennifer Egan
#13. I told her about my life, I read into her ear the first drafts of my Sunday columns in which, without my saying so, she and she alone was present.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
#14. Maybe other writers have perfect first drafts, but I am not one of them. I always try to get the book as tight as I can, but you reach a point as the author where you have lost all perspective.
Sarah Dessen
#15. Only in very rare circumstances will you see something cut out of my first drafts. Maybe it's because of the way I write. I'm very focused on the logical progression of the story, and every character has a role to play.
R.A. Salvatore
#16. I have many stories which don't make it to the computer. When I put it into the computer I make some changes and often add a few sentences here and there. I like the typewriter for first drafts because it means you can't change anything right away, you just have to put it all down.
Arthur Bradford
#17. The first drafts of my novels have all been written in longhand, and then I type them up on my old electric. I have resisted getting a computer because I distrust the whole PC thing. I don't think a great book has yet been written on computer.
J.G. Ballard
#18. I don't read anything electronically. I don't write electronically, either - except e-mails to my family and friends. I write in longhand. I have always written first drafts by hand, but I used to write subsequent drafts and insert pages on a typewriter.
John Irving
#19. Hemingway once said "all first drafts are shit". At this point we're just writing for the trash can so don't be too judgmental, just get it out there and onto the screen.
Dan Howe
#20. I am violently untidy. My desk is overcrowded. I write my first drafts in longhand in a long notebook using a plastic throwaway fountain pen. Then I work on a word processor using a different desk and a different room.
Colm Toibin
#21. First drafts don't have to be perfect. They just have to be written.
Anonymous
#22. Many manage to improve on the first drafts of the lives they are given. But for that they need the courage to jump off a diving board fifty meters high, blindfolded, not knowing if it is water or asphalt that awaits them below.
Alexandre Vidal Porto
#23. I prefer to write first drafts as soon as possible after waking, so that the oneiric inscape is still present to me.
Will Self
#24. Now, practically even better news than that of short assignments is the idea of shitty first drafts. All good writers write them.
Anne Lamott
#25. I've always preferred writing in longhand. I've always written first drafts in longhand.
John Irving
#26. We have to allow ourselves the freedom to make mistakes, including cultural mistakes, in our first drafts. I believe it's okay to get cultural details wrong in your first draft. It's okay if stereotypes emerge. It just means that your experience is limited, that you're human.
Gene Luen Yang
#27. First drafts are for learning what your novel or story is about. Revision is working with that knowledge to enlarge & enhance an idea, to reform it ... Revision is one of the true pleasures of writing.
Bernard Malamud
#28. I'm not conscious of my own themes as I write first drafts, no, and in fact, I work hard to stay in that unconscious space and not ask myself what the novel is about or what my metaphors might mean because then, I think, you're just dead in the water.
Laurie Foos
#29. Conversations in the flesh are the first drafts toward the later conversations of the mind, where words and ideas are sorted and elaborated, recast.
Keith Miller
#30. I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's great rewriters.
James A. Michener
#31. I tend to write first drafts that are incredibly cognitive, very rational, very boring. They come off as justification. Like, 'This is my idea and here's all the reasons that it's right.' It doesn't make for very compelling reading.
Donald Miller
#32. I'm pretty obsessive-compulsive, and I'm very fast. I tend to not write for a long period of time until I can't not write, and then I write first drafts in gallops. I won't eat right. I forget to do my laundry.
Adam Rapp
#33. All writing problems are psychological problems. Blocks usually stem from the fear of being judged. If you imagine the world listening, you'll never write a line. That's why privacy is so important. You should write first drafts as if they will never be shown to anyone.
Erica Jong
#34. I would advise any beginning writer to write the first drafts as if no one else will ever read them - without a thought about publication - and only in the last draft to consider how the work will look from the outside.
Anne Tyler
#35. All great stories began as shitty first drafts.
There are no exceptions to this.
M. Kirin
#36. One of the things that I love about writing novels is that it really doesn't matter what next step you take as long as you're pursuing some intuition or instinct. Of course, then, intuitions or instincts don't make for great novels, but they often make for good first drafts.
Jonathan Safran Foer
#37. Secure writers don't sell first drafts. They patiently rewrite until the script is as director-ready, as actor-ready as possible. Unfinished work invites tampering, while polished, mature work seals its integrity.
Robert McKee
#38. By the time I wrote those first three songs for his new CD ... I wanted to push the poetics as hard as I could push them, and not decide the songs were finished until I committed them to whatever the recording format was. I went through drafts right up until I recorded every single one of them ...
Steve Earle
#39. When I have a first draft, I have a floor under my feet that I can walk on. And then, especially with the help of the computer, rewriting is so easy to do with the computer, much easier than it used to be with the typewriter. So the books go through numerous drafts.
Philip Roth
#40. My only writing ritual is to shave my head bald between writing the first and second drafts of a book. If I can throw away all my hair, then I have the freedom to trash any part of the book on the next rewrite.
Chuck Palahniuk
#41. My first draft is usually how I meant it, but my second and third drafts is how I want to be understood.
Selena Haskins
#42. Once I've got the first draft down on paper then I do five or six more drafts, the last two of which will be polishing drafts. The ones in between will flesh out the characters and maybe I'll check my research.
Colleen McCullough
#43. You know, my first three or four drafts, you can see, are on legal pads in long hand. And then I go to a typewriter, and I know everybody's switching to a computer. And I'm sort of laughed at.
Robert Caro
#44. [News is] a first rough draft of history.
Phil Graham
#45. I try to write everyday. I do that much better over here than when I'm teaching. I always rewrite, usually fairly close-on which is to say first draft, then put it aside for 24 hours then more drafts.
Marilyn Hacker
#46. I think longer that you sit on a screenplay the longer you sit. I'm a firm believer that you can write the magic out of a movie, out of a screenplay. I'm not saying that the first draft is always the best draft but a lot of times the magic is in the first couple of drafts. T
Todd Farmer
#48. Your first draft is a petulant teenager, sure it knows best, adamant that its Mother is wrong. Your third draft has emerged from puberty, realising that its Mother was right about everything.
Angeline Trevena
#49. The first draft is for YOU, the writer; the second and subsequent drafts are for the reader. Trying to do both things at once - figuring out what we want to say, while also fashioning it for another human being to read - is the cause of writer's block.
Karen Karbo
#50. I began my first novel when I was 15. It went through three drafts, of around 40,000 words each. If I find it, I'll burn it.
Charles Stross
#51. Yes, the first draft is the key. That's why I put so much energy, focus, and attention on the first draft, because I respect that first go at the story. If I don't have the key in that first draft, I invariably won't get it in subsequent drafts, though I can craft around it.
Caridad Svich
#52. A writer must have all the confidence in the world when writing the first draft and none whatsoever when editing subsequent drafts.
T. Davis Bunn
#53. Above all, a query letter is a sales pitch and it is the single most important page an unpublished writer will ever write. It's the first impression and will either open the door or close it. It's that important, so don't mess it up. Mine took 17 drafts and two weeks to write.
Nicholas Sparks
#55. The first draft you're pretty much on your own, so I love that. I can let my imagination go wild. I just go crazy. Then, over the years - it takes years to write these things, to make these things come to pass - there are many, many, many drafts. For Maleficent, there were at least 15.
Linda Woolverton
#56. Write what you feel like writing at first without worrying about how it sounds. That's what second drafts are for. Enjoy the first one!
B.A. Gabrielle
#57. In my office in Florida I have, I think, 30 manuscript piles around the room. Some are screenplays or comic books or graphic novels. Some are almost done. Some I'm rewriting. If I'm working with a co-writer, they'll usually write the first draft. And then I write subsequent drafts.
James Patterson
#58. With my first book, I was hired to write a draft of the script. I was so young and less confident. They put me through seven or eight drafts and it was just getting worse and worse, and then the film was never made.
Emma Donoghue
#59. I wrote a book. It sucked. I wrote nine more books. They sucked, too. Meanwhile, I read every single thing I could find on publishing and writing, went to conferences, joined professional organizations, hooked up with fellow writers in critique groups, and didn't give up. Then I wrote one more book.
Beth Revis
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