First Draft Quotes

I do a nice sloppy first draft like everybody else. And then just work at it and work at it and groom it. I get input from other people. ~ Diablo Cody

I don't write easily or rapidly. My first draft usually has only a few elements worth keeping. I have to find what those are and build from them and throw out what doesn't work, or what simply is not alive. ~ Susan Sontag

Getting that first draft out is a horribly hard grind, but that (perversely) is where the joy of it lies. ~ Jonathan Stroud

I calculated that if I wrote five pages a day, which seemed very doable, I would have an 1,800-page first draft when the deadline rolled around. Though completely unwritten, I was very impressed with how long my first draft would be. ~ Michael Showalter

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

Unfortunately, most news writing is the product of a first draft culture. ~ Michael Gartner

For writing a first draft requires from the writer a peculiar internal state which ordinary life does not induce.
... how to set yourself spinning? ~ Annie Dillard

To me the only real star of the movie is the writer. And I work with writers very closely, from outline to first draft and on to the seventh draft, whatever it takes. Then my job is to support the director to make the best movie we can. Some producers try to go past them, but my job is to support them. ~ Dino De Laurentiis

Early in his writing career Michael Lincoln expected he would look up from his word processor, out through his window and be able to take in the flat calm of the Pacific Ocean, or the choppy Atlantic. The North Sea, even, maybe the Thames river. Some body of water, surely. He glanced up from the first draft of his third crime novel and beheld the magnificent vista of Garrand's Scrap Yard in Newton-le-Willows, Merseyside. ~ GB Hope

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

Your first draft is not a gold nugget. It might be a nugget, but it's not golden. ~ Ethan Nahté

I find getting the first draft down to be the biggest challenge. Every word, every punctuation mark, every plot point is a decision. It's much more fun to play with something that already exists. ~ Cynthia Leitich Smith

Back in my pulp-mag days, I worked from about 8:30 to noon, took an hour off for lunch, and worked again from one to three, for a work day of five and a half hours or so. I wrote 20 to 30 pages of copy in that time, doing it all first draft, so that I was able to produce a short story of 5,000-7,500 words in a single day. ~ Robert Silverberg

Whoever produced the first draft would need, in all fairness, to put in some of what the other side wanted alongside his own demands. His statement of the other side's wishes then became an irreducible minimum, while all of his own demands were still up for negotiation. So the drafter always started at a disadvantage. Greg vowed to remember never to write the first draft. ~ Ken Follett

I am a technophile, so there is no such thing as a first draft. The first draft plunges on, and about a quarter of the way through it I realise I'm doing things wrong, so I start rewriting it. What you call the first draft becomes rather like a caterpillar; it is progressing fairly slowly, but there is movement up and down its whole length, the whole story is being changed. I call this draft zero, telling myself how the story is supposed to go. ~ Terry Pratchett

January 8 has been a lucky day for me. I have started all my books on that day, and all of them have been well received by the readers. I write eight to ten hours a day until I have a first draft, then I can relax a little. I am very disciplined. I write in silence and solitude. I light a candle to call inspiration and the muses, and I surround myself with pictures of the people I love, dead and alive. ~ Isabel Allende

I don't fiddle or edit or change while I'm going through that first draft. ~ Nora Roberts

I've realized that with each novel I seem to set out a kind of puzzle for myself. And I am never sure in the process of writing a first draft how it's all going to turn out. ~ Laurie Foos

A dream is like a first draft.
No one will ever see it but you. ~ T.N. Suarez

Don't stop with your first draft. ~ P. J. Plauger

Journalism is the first draft of history ~ Phil Graham

If somebody asked for the first draft of something I'd written, it'd probably be pretty close to whatever got published. I get enjoyment out of writing, but I get absolutely no enjoyment out of rewriting, so I don't do much of it. The more you work on something, certainly, the better it gets. But there's also a pretty clear law of diminishing returns. ~ Chuck Klosterman

I feel very protective in the first draft, when all the pieces are coming together. I work in a way that is not linear or chronological at all, even with the short story. I will just be writing bits and pieces, and then when I have all the pieces on the table, that for me is when it feels like the real work begins. ~ Jill McCorkle

The writing of the script is a continual process. There's the first draft and then many, many re-writes here and there. ~ Abdellatif Kechiche

I believe the way to write a good play is to convince yourself it is easy to do
then go ahead and do it with ease. Don't maul, don't suffer, don't groan till the first draft is finished. A play is a pheonix and it dies a thousand deaths. Usually at night. In the morning it springs up again from its ashes and crows like a happy rooster. It is never as bad as you think, it is never as good. It is somewhere in between, and success or failure depends on which end of your emotional gamut concerning its value it approaches more closely. But it is much more likely to be good if you think it is wonderful while you are writing the first draft. An artist must believe in himself. Your belief is contagious. Others may say he is vain, but they are affected. ~ Tennessee Williams

I cried most days working on the first draft. The last scenes were the hardest. I had a feeling where I wanted to end - the exact note - but I couldn't see how to get there. Sarah Murphy, my editor, asked the right questions to help me. I think of 'The Bear' as a hopeful book. ~ Claire Cameron

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

In my first draft every sentence I put down is to advance the story. Each subsequent draft - the 3rd, the 7th, the 27th - is trying to turn each of those sentences into a poem. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

People who go on to be writers are those who can forgive themselves the horror of the first draft. ~ Alain De Botton

I begin. I write a draft without ever looking back. Without ever touching what's gone before. Because I think it will be shit, so I daren't look back. I write a draft. I start again. I have the text when I start the second draft and then I do the same thing a third time.
- To Linda L. Richards, The January Interview ~ Clive Barker

Some writers find that they don't know their themes until they've finished the first draft (I am one). They then rewrite with an eye toward balancing on that tightrope: not too contrived, not too rambling; does what I'm saying about the world below me actually add up to anything? Other writers pay attention to these things as they write the first draft. Either way, an awareness of the macro and micro levels of theme can provide one more tool for thinking about what you should write, and how. ~ Nancy Kress

When I was writing my first draft, and feeling grandiose, I e-mailed an artist/clothing designer I know and suggested we collaborate on a fashion line inspired by the outfits my characters wore. I regret that we never did that. ~ Heidi Julavits

When I'm writing the first draft, I'm writing in a very slovenly way: anything to get the outline of the story on paper. ~ Pat Barker

One
cannot judge in advance whether or not the idea of the story
is worthwhile because until one has finished writing the story
one does not know for sure what the idea is; and one cannot
judge the style of a story on the basis of a first draft, because
in a first draft the style of the finished story does not yet exist. ~ John Gardner

Once the first draft is done, the really tough work begins. ~ Mark Rubinstein

Generally I finish a first draft in 2-6 months, then I set it aside for a while so that when I come back to it I can read it with fresh eyes and figure out how to improve it. ~ Margaret Haddix

if you are satisfied with your first draft you are not writing, you are excreting ~ Jennifer Ross

To be a self rewritten from a lost first draft. ~ J.J. Abrams

The purpose of the first draft is not to get it right, but to get it written. ~ John Dufresne

When a solid first draft of an original tale is complete ... you feel as if you could do anything. ~ Christy Hall

The first draft of everything, I write longhand. One of the nice things about that is that it makes you keep going. If you write a bad sentence on the computer, then it's very tempting to go back and fidget with it and spend another 20 minutes trying to make it into a good sentence. ~ Jonathan Dee

I guess the thing I would say most fervently is that your original impulse to write something is an impulse you should trust, and that if it doesn't work on the first draft, which it hardly ever does, the commitment to revising ought to be something you embrace really early. And to revise and revise and revise. ~ Antonya Nelson

Now let's say you've finished your first draft. Congratulations! Good job! Have a glass of champagne, send out for pizza, do whatever it is you do when you've got something to celebrate. If you have someone who has been impatiently waiting to read your novel-a spouse, let's say, someone who has perhaps been working nine to five and helping to pay the bills while you chase your dream-then this is the time to give up the goods ... if, that is, your first reader or readers will promise not to talk to you about the book until you are ready to talk to them about it. ~ Stephen King

You know how sometimes you're talking to people who love you and give you unconditional love, and you say, "But you know what? Let me back up. I forgot to say ... "You can do that, right? You don't hesitate and say, "Oh my God! I forgot to say that!". You just speak! And you say it all, until you have nothing more to say. And that's your first draft. It's done. ~ Sandra Cisneros

Writing the first draft of a new story is incredibly difficult for me. I will happily do revisions, because once I can see the words on the page, I can go about ripping them up and moving scenes around. A blank page, though? Terrifying. I'm always angsty when I'm working my way through a first draft. ~ Marie Lu

Learn to take criticism. Your first draft won't be perfect, and it's damaging to the book to think that it is. Every great book you've ever read has been rewritten a dozen times. This is the hardest think to learn (trust me), but very, very important. ~ Patrick Ness

The problem is once you've written the opening paragraph and worked out how the rest of the story will go in your head, there's nothing in it for you. I write in longhand using disposable fountain pens on the right-hand side of the notebook for the first draft, then I rewrite some of the sentences and paragraphs on the left-hand side. ~ Colm Toibin

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. ~ Anne Lamott

Life is a first draft ... with NO rewrite. ~ George Bernard Shaw

But this face, my face, like all faces, is not only a collection of traces- it's also the first draft of a future face... In my young face I instinctively read a first wrinkle of doubt, a first smile of indifference: lines of a story I'll rewrite and understand on a future reading. ~ Valeria Luiselli

The hardest part of writing is the first draft, and the closer you get to your deadline, the messier your workspace becomes - but that's the same with any creative outlet. ~ Tess Gerritsen

Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, don't be precious about your first draft, it's an architectural blueprint to a whole building, be your own worst critic, confront your weakness and remember it's a craft. ~ Tobsha Learner

I spent two months on the first draft, working 8 hours a day, five days a week. ~ George Stephen

If journalism is the first draft of history, then talk radio provides an early glimpse into how the meaning of political events will be spun for ideological and partisan purposes. ~ Jackson Katz

I've always said, 'I have nothing to say, only to add.' And it's with each addition that the writing gets done. The first draft of anything is really just a track. ~ Gore Vidal

I write a very rough first draft of every chapter, then I rewrite every chapter. I try to get it down in the first rewrite, but some chapters I can't get quite right the third time. There are some I go over and over and over again. ~ Robert Stone

It's not that human nature suddenly changed and became egalitarian; men still tried to dominate others when they could get away with it. Rather, people armed with weapons and gossip created what Boehm calls "reverse dominance hierarchies" in which the rank and file band together to dominate and restrain would-be alpha males. (It's uncannily similar to Marx's dream of the "dictatorship of the proletariat.")34 The result is a fragile state of political egalitarianism achieved by cooperation among creatures who are innately predisposed to hierarchical arrangements. It's a great example of how "innate" refers to the first draft of the mind. The final edition can look quite different, so it's a mistake to look at today's hunter-gatherers and say, "See, that's what human nature really looks like! ~ Jonathan Haidt

I certainly wanted to write a book that was honest about New Orleans without explaining it to death, so much so that the first draft contained references absolutely incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't lived here for several years. ~ Poppy Z. Brite

Until recently, the question was 'Why can't a woman be more like a man?' It should have been changed to 'Why can't both sexes be more like the best parts of each other?' Instead, the pendulum swung to the 1960s feminist lapel button Adam Was a First Draft. True enough. So are we all. ~ Warren Farrell

(The main advantage of books over life is that they can be redrafted and redrafted, whereas life, alas, is always a first draft.) ~ Matt Haig

The best advice on writing was given to me by my first editor, Michael Korda, of Simon and Schuster, while writing my first book. 'Finish your first draft and then we'll talk,' he said. It took me a long time to realize how good the advice was. Even if you write it wrong, write and finish your first draft. Only then, when you have a flawed whole, do you know what you have to fix. ~ Dominick Dunne

I'm trying to break myself of that habit [of not writing out a first draft ] because I'm working on a couple novels and I know if I tried to write those books the way I wrote the stories it would take me years to finish. ~ Donald Ray Pollock

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

You want to be able to say anything when you do your first draft, because some of that goofy stuff that you think has nothing to do with it is probably where the mother lode is. ~ Sandra Cisneros

Have the courage to write a lousy first draft. ~ Mark Rubinstein

That was fantastic," Alvarez said. "I want to do it again. Next year, maybe, when my legs grow back." "Stop being such a baby," Laila said. "Ignore her," Alvarez said to Neil. "She's just sour because she lost nine goals in forty-five minutes. Don't know why, not like it's a new personal record or - ohhh, it is. Ouch, that's gotta sting a bit. So much for being first-draft. ~ Nora Sakavic

This life isn't bad for a first draft. ~ Joan Konner

Writing is so hard ... The first draft writing is so hard that sometimes in the beginning, before the work itself takes over, carrying you on its flood, you must give yourself rewards. "When I write this chapter, I can call my boyfriend." "When I finish one page more, I can get an ice cream cone." "If I write this section, I'll find a check in the mail." ~ Sophy Burnham

My first draft is very short-lived. It goes directly to the process of re-writes and to the hands of my alter ego. The part of me that is a military officer evaluating what I expect to be crap. ~ Omayra Vélez

I wrote the first draft of my first novel at Michigan, and then I wrote the first draft of 'Salvage the Bones' at Stanford. So I workshopped the entire thing. ~ Jesmyn Ward

[In response to atrocities against Armenians] the British government issued a joint memo with France and Russia on 24 May 1915. The first draft, proposed by Russia, contained the phrase "crimes against Christianity and civilization," but France and Britain feared this would offend their own colonial Muslim populations and succeeded in changing the phrase to "crimes against humanity." This paved the way for the concept to assume its place after the war as one of the most important categories in international law. ~ Taner Akcam

The first draft is the down draft - you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft - you fix it up. ~ Anne Lamott

I generally write a first draft that's pretty lean. Just get the story down. ~ Nora Roberts

While the web is very much the first draft of history, a rough-cut, it still has to be good journalism, well-sourced, reliable. Clearly, the printed form is going to have more effort put into it, going to be more reflective and relevant. ~ Lionel Barber

I write very quickly; I rewrite very slowly. It takes me nearly as long to rewrite a book as it does to get the first draft. I can write more quickly than I can read. ~ John Irving

Writing Tip:
Don't let the "writing rules" bog you down when you're writing the first draft; they don't matter when you're writing the story, only when you're editing the story. ~ Linda Westphal

I discovered John Truby ten years ago when a friend told me about his screenwriting course. I studied Truby's principles for a year and
using them
I wrote the first draft of The Thieves of Ostia in two weeks. I go back to his teachings before each new book I write. Each time I study Truby, I learn something new. ~ Caroline Lawrence

It takes me six months to do a story. I think it out and write it sentence by sentence - no first draft. I can't write five words but that I can change seven. ~ Dorothy Parker

I write very raw, ugly, illiterate first drafts very quickly (novels are always in first draft in under a year) and then I spend years and years fine-tuning, revising, editing, etc. What inspires me? Who knows. I am not inspired that much. That's why I write long form fiction - I am not much of a short story writer. Ideas come seldom, but when a good one comes, I really stick to it and see it out. I'm a problem-solver - I've never thrown out an entire manuscript; I've always forced myself to repair it until it was a lovable thing again. ~ Porochista Khakpour

Ideas come at any moment
except when you demand them. Most ideas come while I'm physically active, at the gym, with friends, gardening, so I always carry pen and paper.
My first draft is always written in longhand. But once the first dozen chapters, more like short stories, are written, then momentum builds until I can't leave the project until it's done. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Writing a first-draft battle scene is akin to real combat - chaos, confusion, and you must keep your cool as you fire word bullets downrange. ~ Don Roff

My first draft is the skeleton of the story. I have to go back over it from start to finish repeatedly, adding all the layers of meat to the bones until, eventually, it becomes a living, breathing thing. ~ Alisha Ashton

We don't claim perfection; even the best journalism is but a first draft of history. But we bring to the challenge certain basic beliefs that aren't much in fashion these days. We believe facts are facts and that they are ascertainable through honest, open-minded and diligent reporting. We thus believe that truth is attainable by laying fact upon fact, much like the construction of a cathedral. News, in short, is not merely a matter of views. And truth is not merely in the eye of the beholder.
[Letter From the Publisher: A Report to The Wall Street Journal's Readers, 12 January, 1993] ~ Peter R. Kann

But revision is a creative act, not merely an analytical imposition of rules of style on a more creative first draft. That's a myth - that the first draft is more creative and everything after that is ruining creativity. ~ K.M. Soehnlein

You know a shooter when you see it. At least the creative people do. If a picture isn't obvious in the first draft you're kind of screwed. ~ William Monahan

It's one of the things writing students don't understand. They write a first draft and are quite disappointed, or often should be disappointed. They don't understand that they have merely begun, and that they may be merely beginning even in the second or third draft. ~ Elizabeth Hardwick

I write everything out in longhand in one fast go. And then I throw out the first few and start over again. By the end of the first draft, the whole thing's messy and disgusting and horrible, but you really understand the foundational stuff. ~ Lauren Groff

Never get too attached to the first draft of anything – this includes writing, art, homes, love. You will revise and revise and revise. We are always in the midst of our own becoming. ~ Jeanette LeBlanc

Just start scribbling. The first draft is never your last draft. Nothing you write is by accident. ~ Guy Garvey

Seventy percent of a first draft is garbage and 30 percent is gold, but you have to write 100 percent to get that 30. ~ Laurell K. Hamilton

The longer I write, the more important I believe it is to write the first draft as fast as possible. In drafting, I push myself so I am at the edge of discomfort ... Later, it will be time for consideration and reconsideration, slow, careful revision and editing. But on the first draft I have to achieve velocity, just as you do if you want the bike to balance. ~ Donald Murray

It's important to put aside your internal editor and just get words down on the page when working on a first draft. ~ S.J. Scott

The first draft of anything is sh*t. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

Writing a first draft is like groping one's way into a dark room, or overhearing a faint conversation, or telling a joke whose punchline you've forgotten. As someone said, one writes mainly to rewrite, for rewriting and revising are how one's mind comes to inhabit the material fully. ~ Ted Solotaroff

Writing a first draft and reminding myself that I'm simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles. ~ Shannon Hale

After the first draft, I sat back and thought to myself, "where did that come from?" That thought was quickly followed by "what is wrong with you? ~ Bentley Little

(about divorce): Sometimes you have to scrap your first draft and start over. ~ Danielle Ganek

The research is the easiest. The outline is the most fun. The first draft is the hardest, because every word of the outline has to be fleshed out. The rewrite is very satisfying. ~ Ken Follett

The initial organization of the brain does not depend that much on experience. Nature provides a first draft, which experience then revises. ~ Jonathan Haidt

I never reread a text until I have finished the first draft. Otherwise it's too discouraging. ~ Gore Vidal