First-draft Quote by John Gardner

After finishing a draft, no matter how rough, I almost always put it aside for a while. It doesn't matter if it's a story…

— Leslie Jamison

Maybe other writers have perfect first drafts, but I am not one of them. I always try to get the book as tight as…

— Sarah Dessen

“All great stories began as shitty first drafts. There are no exceptions to this.”

— M. Kirin

I always write a draft version of the novel in which I try to develop, not the story, not the plot, but the possibilities…

— Mario Vargas Llosa

“A writer is bound to have varying degrees of success, and I think that that is partly an issue of how central the burden…

— John Hersey

“But once your basic story is on paper, you need to think about what it means and enrich your following drafts with your conclusions.”

— Stephen King

The only thing I might have noticed [and this is pretty anecdotal] is that there is some tendency to need to be taught that…

— George Saunders

“The purpose of the first draft is not to get it right, but to get it written.”

— John Dufresne

First drafts are for learning what your story is about.

— Bernard Malamud

“...I’ve never understood the logic that says a work doesn’t need to be judged on the quality of its writing or characters simply because…

— Glen Hirshberg

“I believe that a writer should never attempt a contemporary theme or a very precise topography. Otherwise people are immediately going to find mistakes.…

— Fernando Sorrentino

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

— Nora Roberts