First Draft COMPLETE
Finish[ed] the damned thing. (Thanks to J. Michael Straczynski)
The first draft of anything is shit.
— Ernest Hemingway
Every first draft is perfect, because all a first draft has to do is exist. It's perfect in its existence. The only way it could be imperfect would be to NOT exist.
— Jane SmileyAll great stories began as shitty first drafts. There are no exceptions to this.
— M. Kirin
Repeat the mantra: Writing is when I make the words. Editing is when I make them not shitty.
— Chuck WendigI’m writing a first draft and reminding myself that I’m simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.
— Shannon Hale
My first draft is the skeleton of the story. I have to go back over it from start to finish repeatedly, adding all the layers of meat to the bones until, eventually, it becomes a living, breathing thing.
— Alisha AshtonYou can fix anything but a blank page.
— Nora Roberts
I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter.
— James A. MichenerI have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.
— Vladimir Nabokov
I do not write with ease, nor am I ever pleased with anything I write. And so I rewrite.
— Margaret MitchellThe best writing is rewriting.
— E.B. White
...what I write is smarter than I am. Because I can rewrite it.
— Susan Sontag“Good novels are not written, they are rewritten. Great novels are diamonds mined from layered rewrites.” — Piers Paul Read
It has been said that Ernest Hemingway would rewrite scenes until they pleased him, often thirty or forty times. Hemingway, critics claimed, was a genius. Was it his genius that drove him to work hard, or was it hard work that resulted in works of genius?"
— James N. Frey
Giving myself a moment before I start restructuring one of the main POVs.