Drafts Quotes

“Awful first drafts are fine—Agree with this.If you don’t finish something, you’ll never get in the game. Just quell the voice in your head that says “Are you kidding? No one is going to want to read this drivel” and keep on going. You’re going to revise and revise and then revise again anyway.”

“I would advise any beginning writer to write the first drafts as if no one else will ever read them - without a thought about publication - and only in the last draft to consider how the work will look from the outside.”

“The other six or seven drafts are going to be pure torture. So why not enjoy the first draft, in the hope that your joy will seek and find others in the world who, reading your story, will catch fire, too?”

“Now, practically even better news than that of short assignments is the idea of shitty first drafts. All good writers write them.”

“There would seem to be four stages in the composition of a story. First comes the germ of the story, then a period of more or less conscious meditation, then the first draft, and finally the revision, which may be simply ‘pencil work’ as John O’Hara calls it — that is, minor changes in wording — or may lead to writing several drafts and what amounts to a new work.”

“The investments of your youth, are drafts upon your old age. Invest sheer poetry in yourself.”

“The poet drafts his work as a writer but edits it as a sculptor, with his pen as a chisel and his mind a hammer.”

“In a world full of polished and perfected final drafts, she was the raw and honest scribbled story.”

“Love lies in those unsent drafts in your mailbox. Sometimes you wonder whether things would have been different if you'd clicked 'Send'.”