It doesn’t matter if you’re a beginner or a professional, writes Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird, when you first sit down to write something new, “We all often feel like we are pulling teeth.” If you’re struggling with a first draft of your novel or screenplay, you might find encouragement in these quotes from famous writers:

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[1] “The first draft of anything is shit.”  — Ernest Hemingway

 

[2] “Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything really good.” — William Faulkner

 

[3] “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

 

[4] “Sometimes in a nervous frenzy I just fling words as if I were flinging mud at a wall. Blurt out, heave out, babble out something — anything — as a first draft…Until it exists, writing has not really begun.” — John McPhee

 

[5] “I probably end up tossing out a quarter of what I write in the first draft of a book chapter. Even though I try to be pretty thoughtful about figuring out what I want to say before I write, you still have to see how concepts play on page to decide if they deserve to stay.”  — Cal Newport

 

[6] “Most times, I’ll just sit there, suffer, write shitty sentences, and hope I can make the next draft less putrid.” — Daniel Pink

 

[7] “Get it all down. Let it pour out of you and onto the page. Write an incredibly shitty, self-indulgent, whiny, mewling first draft. Then take out as many of the excesses as you can.” — Anne Lamott

 

[8] “I’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

 

[9] “The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.”  ―Terry Pratchett

 

[10] “To become a proper writer, you have to forgive yourself the catastrophe of the first draft.” —Alain de Botton

 

[11] “The first draft reveals the art; revision reveals the artist.” — Michael Lee

 

[12] “For me, it’s always been a process of trying to convince myself that what I’m doing in a first draft isn’t important. One way you get through the wall is by convincing yourself that it doesn’t matter. No one is ever going to see your first draft. Nobody cares about your first draft. And that’s the thing that you may be agonizing over, but honestly, whatever you’re doing can be fixed…For now, just get the words out. Get the story down however you can get it down, then fix it.” — Neil Gaiman

 

[13] “In the first draft, I write for myself, and always with the door closed. No one ever sees those words.” — Mary Jaksch

 

[14] “I think the trouble starts when you sit down to write and imagine that you will achieve something magical and magnificent — and when you don’t, panic sets in. The solution is never to sit down and imagine that you will achieve something magical and magnificent.” — Malcolm Gladwell

 

[15] “If you are willing to do something that might not work, you’re closer to being an artist.” — Seth Godin

 

[16] “Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.” — Barbara Kingsolver

 

[17] “We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.” — Kurt Vonnegut

 

[18] “It doesn’t matter if it’s good right now, it just needs to exist.” — Austin Kleon

 

[19] “Writing—I can really only speak to writing here—always, always only starts out as shit: an infant of monstrous aspect; bawling, ugly, terrible, and it stays terrible for a long, long time (sometimes forever). Unlike cooking, for example, where largely edible, if raw, ingredients are assembled, cut, heated, and otherwise manipulated into something both digestible and palatable, writing is closer to having to reverse-engineer a meal out of rotten food.” —  David Rakoff

 

[20] “Good stories are not written. They are rewritten.” — Phyllis Whitney

 

[21] “The first draft is a skeleton….just bare bones. The rest of the story comes later with revising.” — Judy Blume

 

[22] “I just give myself permission to suck. I delete about 90 percent of my first drafts… so it doesn’t really matter much if on a particular day I write beautiful and brilliant prose that will stick in the minds of my readers forever, because there’s a 90 percent chance I’m just gonna delete whatever I write anyway. I find this hugely liberating.” — John Green

 

[23] “I believe the first draft of a book — even a long one — should take no more than three months… Any longer and — for me, at least — the story begins to take on an odd foreign feel.” — Stephen King

 

[24] “The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth deadfalling and tiger-trapping.” — Ray Bradbury

 

[25] “Every first draft is perfect because all the 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 Smiley

 

[26] “Writing the last page of the first draft is the most enjoyable moment in writing. It’s one of the most enjoyable moments in life, period.” — Nicholas Sparks

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