First Draft Quotes

91 quotes by 83 authors

I hate first drafts, and it never gets easier. People always wonder what kind of superhero power they'd like to have. I wanted the ability… — Judy Blume
The Opera is obviously the first draft of a fine spectacle; it suggests the idea of one. — Jean de la Bruyere
You write your first draft with your heart and you re-write with your head. The first key to writing is to write, not to think. — Sean Connery
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… — Ted Solotaroff
You write that first draft really to see how it's going to come out. — James A. Michener
When I finish a first draft, it's always just as much of a mess as it's always been. I still make the same mistakes every… — Michael Chabon
After finishing the first draft, I work for as long as it takes (for two or three weeks, most often) to rework that first draft… — Kent Haruf
Writing is rewriting. A writer must learn to deepen characters, trim writing, intensify scenes. To fall in love with the first draft to the point… — Richard North Patterson
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… — Susan Sontag
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… — Donald Murray
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… — Dorothy Parker
The first draft of a story is the writer's clay. — Bruce Coville
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… — Porochista Khakpour
It is better to write a bad first draft than to write no first draft at all. — Will Shetterly
The first draft of anything is sh*t. — Ernest Hemingway
The initial organization of the brain does not depend that much on experience. Nature provides a first draft, which experience then revises. — Jonathan Haidt
The first draft of a bookâ€”even a long oneâ€”should take no more than three months, the length of a season. — Stephen King
Iâ€™ve always said, â€˜I have nothing to say, only to add.â€™ And itâ€™s with each addition that the writing gets done. The first draft of… — Gore Vidal
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… — Colleen McCullough
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

Who Wrote These First Draft Quotes

83 authors contributed a total of 91 First Draft Quotes, led by these top contributors: