A Quote by Colleen McCullough

In early draft it never satisfied me, and that was when it clicked into place and it went so well as a diary.

Colleen McCullough

Quote Topics

Clicked Diary Draft Early Me Never Place Satisfied Well

Quote Author

Colleen McCullough
Australian - Author
Born: June 1, 1937

Never be satisfied with a first draft. In fact, never be satisfied with your own stuff at all, until you're certain it's as good as your finite powers can enable it to be.

Rose Tremain

In a faraway land called 'pre-2000,' what Earthlings now call blogging was called 'keeping a diary.' It's hard work to do well. I tried doing it in the early 1990s but had to stop because I no longer had a life - instead I had this thing that generated anecdotes to go into my diary. The diary took over and I had to stop.

Douglas Coupland

I'm so old that when I started keeping a diary they were in actual books, and I think that's one the reasons that I've never written about sex. Because early on you had to worry that someone was going to find your diary, so it's bad enough to be writing like Joan Didion, but writing like Joan Didion about sex acts you'd performed with somebody you had known for 20 minutes, that's a bit worse. So I would write in my diary, "I met J. and we had sex five times last night." But I would never write about what we did.

David Sedaris

The art of poetry consists in taking the poem through draft after draft, without losing its inspirational magic: he removes everything irrelevant or distracting, and tightens up what is left. Lazy poets never carry their early drafts far enough: some even believe that virtue lies in the original doodle scrawled on the back of an envelope.

Robert Graves

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

I do not keep a diary. Never have. To write a diary every day is like returning to one's own vomit.

Enoch Powell

The first draft is the child's draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later.

Anne Lamott

With Ibrahim al-Koni, what I figured out was - and you'll see this in his novels - if your time is limited, make the unit of the chapters small so that you can finish one a day, at least in the first draft. Once you have the first draft it's living, and you can coax it to grow and trim it and reshape it and so on. But get that first draft. I think if I'd gone to an MFA program and learned that, it would have been money well spent. But translation has been that for me.

Elliott Colla

I'm never without my personalised Anya Hindmarch diary - I keep my schedule online, too, but my diary is always in my bag. It's crammed Post-its.

Aerin Lauder

I've never written about sex in my diary. Like if you read my diary, you wouldn't think I'm a virgin, but you would have no idea what it is that I've actually ever done.

David Sedaris

We've never been satisfied with just making 'me' music. What we're doing is trying to go to a place of some reverence.

Ed Kowalczyk

I talk to Simon, I write to him. I never used to write a diary. But now I'm writing a diary to him. I think it's not just me, but lots of others, family and friends, can still feel him around.

Petra Nemcova

When I was making the early stuff, I never expected it to be so big. I was in my own kind of bubble. I never wanted to tour; I just wanted to create music and make a diary I could put out into the world. And sometimes, I became the characters.

The Weeknd

I've always loved painting, although I never show anyone what I've done. Mainly because I don't do it well. But it's like a form of visual diary for me. A way of fixing things in my mind.

Judi Dench

I have met many superstars at our place and parties also but I have never taken a photograph with anyone. Sridevi is the only actress with whom I have clicked a picture.