A Quote by Anne Tyler

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.

Anne Tyler

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About Advise Any Beginning Consider Draft Drafts Else Ever First How Last Look Only Outside Publication Read Them Thought Will Without Work Would Write Writer

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Anne Tyler
American - Novelist
Born: October 25, 1941

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 drafts. The ones in between will flesh out the characters and maybe I'll check my research.

Colleen McCullough

I write an actual script rather quickly - a draft will take me two weeks - but I write a lot of drafts. My big thing is I don't re-read. When I write, I never re-read back. I'll send it, because if I re-read back, it will cripple me.

Abi Morgan

I remember Emilio [Estevez] and I were at John's house during the rehearsal process. And John [Huges] had mentioned he wrote the first draft of Breakfast Club in a weekend. And we both at the same time went, "First draft? How many do you have?" And John said he's got four other drafts. And we go, "Can we read them?" And for the next three hours, Emilio and I read those other four drafts.

Judd Nelson

This is all you have to do. Sit down once a day to the novel and start working without internal criticism, without debilitating expectations, without the need to look at your words as if they were already printed and bound. The beginning is only a draft. Drafts are imperfect by definition.

Walter Mosley

I see myself as a first-draft writer, so when I sit down to write something, the first draft is usually pretty close to the end draft. There will be some tweaks along the way, but it's not like I'll go 20 pages and throw it out and start again.

Noah Hawley

Above all, a query letter is a sales pitch and it is the single most important page an unpublished writer will ever write. It's the first impression and will either open the door or close it. It's that important, so don't mess it up. Mine took 17 drafts and two weeks to write.

Nicholas Sparks

As a writer, you look for someplace to start. Once you have a beginning and you've written the first two sentences, nothing else will ever change it.

Ronee Blakley

In ten years I will be a beautiful charming lovely lady writer without any husband or children but lots of lovers and everyone will read the books I write and want to marry me but I will never marry any of them. I will have lots of money and jewels too.

Shirley Jackson

It's more like I write multiple first drafts, handwritten. So with my first novel, I wrote whole drafts from different points of view. There are different versions of that novel in a drawer on loose-leaf sheets. I won't even look at the first draft while I'm writing the second, and I won't look at the second before writing the third.

Lauren Groff

The first draft is for YOU, the writer; the second and subsequent drafts are for the reader. Trying to do both things at once — figuring out what we want to say, while also fashioning it for another human being to read — is the cause of writer’s block.

Karen Karbo

No one can teach writing, but classes may stimulate the urge to write. If you are born a writer, you will inevitably and helplessly write. A born writer has self-knowledge. Read, read, read. And if you are a fiction writer, don't confine yourself to reading fiction. Every writer is first a wide reader.

Cynthia Ozick

No one can teach writing, but classes may stimulate the urge to write. If you are born a writer, you will inevitably and helplessly write. A born writer has self-knowledge. Read, read, read. And if you are a fiction writer, dont confine yourself to reading fiction. Every writer is first a wide reader.

Cynthia Ozick

I never learned to be a writer. I never took screenwriting courses. I never read anyone's scripts. As a writer, my only guiding principle has been to write about things that scare me, write about things that make me feel vulnerable, write about things that will expose my deepest fears, so that's how I write.

Derek Cianfrance

I had written eight drafts of the Lemony Snicket' screenplay when this changing-of-the-guard thing happened, and I said to the new producers, "I don't think I could write any more drafts." I guess I was sort of hoping they would say, "Well that's okay, this last one is perfect." But instead, they said, "It's funny you should say that. We don't think you can write any more drafts either."

Daniel Handler

I will write in words of fire. I will write them on your skin. I will write about desire. Write beginnings, write of sin. You’re the book I love the best, your skin only holds my truth, you will be a palimpsest lines of age rewriting youth. You will not burn upon the pyre. Or be buried on the shelf. You’re my letter to desire: And you’ll never read yourself. I will trace each word and comma As the final dusk descends, You’re my tale of dreams and drama, Let us find out how it ends.