Drafts Quotes

I've done as many as 20 or 30 drafts of a story. Never less than 10 or 12 drafts.

— Raymond Carver

I'm a physical learner. I learn from writing drafts, not reading them.

— Lauren Groff

“Some drafts are always more precious than sent emails.”

— Saravana Kumar Murugan

I wrote the screenplay for 'This Is Where I Leave You' - all 40 drafts of it.

— Jonathan Tropper

I would like to get drafted at all and I will be happy to play for whoever drafts me.

— Kristaps Porzingis

First drafts are for learning what your story is about.

— Bernard Malamud

I write on a laptop, so it's impossible to count drafts anymore.

— Garrison Keillor

I usually do about five drafts per rhyme for each song.

— Gza

It took me years of attempts and failed drafts before I finally wrote the elegies I needed to write.

— Natasha Trethewey

In terms of smaller changes over time, I think good plays are like poems. Every syllable counts. So I wrestle with word…

— Stephen Karam

I don't write drafts. I write from the beginning to the end, and when it's finished, it's done

— Clifford Geertz

I wish I wrote drafts and then revised them, but I don't. What I do is I seem to revise as I…

— Edward Hirsch

I work on one page, revising and polishing until I can't make it better, then move on to the next. Some pages…

— Dean Koontz

It's always hard, but it's always fun to attack a premise that you think is interesting. It does take a few drafts…

— Victor Levin

It is simply not part of my culture to preserve notes. I have never heard of a writer preserving his early drafts.

— Naguib Mahfouz

I have a high guilt quotient. A poem can go through as many as 50 or 60 drafts. It can take from…

— Rita Dove

The first draft you're pretty much on your own, so I love that. I can let my imagination go wild. I just…

— Linda Woolverton

“Your first draft is a petulant teenager, sure it knows best, adamant that its Mother is wrong. Your third draft has emerged…

— Angeline Trevena

I write first drafts by hand. Never do I open an umbrella inside the house. I don't predict wins or losses. I…

— Louise Erdrich

“What I miss most since computers is the existence of rough drafts. […]. I miss the mistakes, the words scribbled in the…

— Jean-Claude Carrière

It's a hard league to make it in, and there's some toughness that's needed, and guys gotta be sharp and guys gotta…

— Sean Payton

First drafts are for learning what your novel or story is about. Revision is working with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance…

— Bernard Malamud

I write by hand in my notebooks and number the drafts, so I know how crazy I can get with this. Some…

— Peter Orner

Once I've got the first draft down on paper then I do five or six more drafts, the last two of which…

— Colleen McCullough

... you should wait until the book is finished before making a judgment on its content. By the time you have gone…

— Walter Mosley

“At the rate these illuminations appear, it will no doubt take me a long time to gather the material for even one…

— Marcel Bénabou

I didn't intentionally emplace the raw material needed for political/allegorical readings into any of the first drafts, but sooner or later I…

— Roy Kesey

“I do three drafts handwritten and then it's typed up... They are different from each other, they are hopefully improvements in the…

— Clive Barker

I taught everyone a very bad lesson at my publisher because they actually gave me deadlines this time and I'm now meeting…

— Nathan Englander

“What are we to do with the knowledge that Tayo was once a woman? That Ceremony held but abandoned considerable investments in…

— David L. Moore

The story, I like to say and remember, is always smarter than you—there will be patterns of theme, image, and idea that…

— Lucy Corin

I had written eight drafts of the Lemony Snicket' screenplay when this changing-of-the-guard thing happened, and I said to the new producers,…

— Daniel Handler

You should write first drafts as if they will never be shown to anyone.

— Erica Jong

Yep, I often lit the barbie with old drafts.

— Richard Flanagan

I'd really be happy with any team that drafts me. It means they see something in me.

— Ja Morant

The excesses of our youth are drafts upon our old age.

— Charles Caleb Colton

“Why are kids like me always being drafted into wars we didn't start?”

— G. Willow Wilson

Every poem probably has sixty drafts behind it.

— Mary Karr

“First drafts don’t have to be perfect. They just have to be written.”

— Anonymous

We are all continually embarking on first drafts, in every aspect of our lives.

— Jules Feiffer