A Quote by John Ciardi

Spontaneous is what you get after the seventeenth draft.

John Ciardi

Quote Topics

After Draft Get Spontaneous

Quote Author

John Ciardi
English - Dramatist
June 24, 1916 - March 30, 1986

After finishing the first draft, I work for as long as it takes (for two or three weeks, most often) to rework that first draft on a computer. Usually that involves expansion: filling in and adding to, but trying not to lose the spontaneous, direct sound. I use that first draft as a touchstone to make sure everything else in that section has the same sound, the same tone and impression of spontaneity.

Kent Haruf

With TV, your first draft just doesn't matter. It's a skeleton, and then there's draft after draft after draft, and so many other factors influence it. It's just a whole different kind of storytelling.

Sarah Pinborough

You should always go through the first draft of a book all at once, I think, to get the best results. You can take time off after the first draft and come back to it fresh.

Judy Blume

Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something-anything-down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft-you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft-you fix it up. You try to say what you have to say more accurately. And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it's loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy.

Anne Lamott

I have to do draft after draft... It takes me a long time, but I love doing it, and I have to do it every day, or I feel slack.

Donald Hall

Some writers sit down without a thought of what they are going to say, and they go through draft after draft.

Alice Walker

Yes, the first draft is the key. That's why I put so much energy, focus, and attention on the first draft, because I respect that first go at the story. If I don't have the key in that first draft, I invariably won't get it in subsequent drafts, though I can craft around it.

Caridad Svich

First draft: let it run. Turn all the knobs up to 11. Second draft: hell. Cut it down and cut it into shape. Third draft: comb its nose and blow its hair. I usually find that most of the book will have handed itself to me on that first draft.

Terry Pratchett

On draft day, I wasn't really nervous at all. Then you turn on the draft, the first five picks go by, and then you still thinking, 'Oh man, I don't know where I'm going to go.' It's really just, by the time draft hits, that's when you get nervous.

Kyle Kuzma

You can't draft for need. You draft for need, you get fired. Draft the best player, and if you've got two of them now you've got three of them. Just take the best players available for you.

Bruce Arians

When you're a litigator, you write so much, so many briefs, over and over again, that you're kind of really focused on one document and have draft after draft, and really pay attention to every single word.

Greg Poehler

Most Americans haven't had my happy experience of living for thirteen years in a seventeenth-century house, since most of America lacks seventeenth-century houses.

John Updike

Once you get into the NFL, it doesn't matter what draft pick you are, what round you are, if you're undrafted or not. It's football time again. The draft, all of that doesn't matter anymore.

Austin Seferian-Jenkins

From watching the draft and following the NFL closely, anything can happen in the draft. But to me, it's not where I get drafted that matters to me, to be completely honest.