Complexity Quote by Peter Wolf

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

— Nora Roberts

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…

— Susan Sontag

What I love about drafts is the experimental nature of them. The draft is what you know about writing a poem running up against…

— Cornelius Eady

First drafts are for learning what your story is about.

— Bernard Malamud

This is all you have to do. Sit down once a day to the novel and start working without internal criticism, without debilitating expectations,…

— Walter Mosley

Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. What I’ve learned to…

— Anne Lamott

I write first drafts by hand, often out of the house somewhere, and then, when I've got a draft, type it up and let…

— David Means

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

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

— Lucy Corin

My first drafts are always terrible, and I hate them, but the process for me is all about writing the bad version until it…

— Jesse Andrews

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

“Whenever I write first drafts, I like to maximize the possibility of f-ups, mistakes, mis-written words, digressions, crazy changes in tone, etc. This is…

— Jeff VanderMeer