Jonathan Dee Quotes

I am usually protective of my work, not showing it to anyone until it has been redrafted and polished.

I have a high guilt quotient. A poem can go through as many as 50 or 60 drafts. It can take from a day to two years-or longer.

Although every writer dreams of getting it right on the first pass, very few succeed.

My self-editing process is intense.

I don't do rewrites. I put all the pages in a pile next to the typewriter.

Some people like to purge out a draft and just let it go and then go back and fix it, but I'm a writer-rewriter. I can't move on until I feel like it's presentable.

When people start writing there is this idea that you have to get everything right first time, every sentence has to be perfect, every paragraph has to be perfect, every chapter has to be perfect, but what you're doing is not any kind of public show, until you're ready for it.

First drafts are never any good - at least, mine aren't.

When I write something, I constantly rewrite.

Every first draft sucks, so when you have your favorite novel, and you're like, 'Wow, this is a masterpiece,' and then you write your first draft, and you're like, 'This is really bad,' and then you're like 'I can't do this because this is nowhere close.' When, in reality, the book you loved so much started out just as crappy.

Everything I write goes through a lot of drafts. A hundred rewrites is not unusual for me to go through - the last fifty maybe just going back and forth on a single line or word selection.

The first draft of anything is sh*t.

You need not expect to get your book right the first time.

Instead of a dedicated room, my best trigger is the actual habit of reading over the texts from the day before. Marking. Changing. Fussing. This ritual amounts to a habit of trust. Trust that I can make it better. That if I keep trying, I will come closer to something true.

Books aren't written - they're rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn't quite done it.

I write 1,000-1,500 words. The next day, I rewrite it and add 1,000-1,500 words to the end of it.

If you get a sense that your writing isn't quite working, change it. Or cut it out. Don't just tell yourself it'll do, because it won't.

Many first-time novelists end up rewriting their first two or three chapters, trying to get them 'just right.' But the point of the first draft is not to get it right; it's to get it written - so that you'll have something to work with.

Nothing you write, if you hope to be good, will ever come out as you first hoped.

I always write on unlined typing paper and write the first draft in longhand, using cheap Bic pens. I try to write about four pages a day, which usually yields a first draft in six months. I don't plot ahead of time, so I'm flying by the seat of my pants for the first draft.

I write slowly, and I write many, many drafts. I probably have to work as hard as anyone, and maybe harder, to finish a poem. I often write a poem over years, because it takes me a long time to figure out what to say and how best to say it.

It always strikes me how almost unbelievably bad are the early versions of my novels.

I write slowly. I actually write quickly, but I throw out so much material.

I revise a lot while I'm drafting, often going back to the beginning again and again to revise because I've changed massive things about the story. By the time I get to the end of a first draft, I've been through the beginning lots of times.

Unfortunately, there's still a lot of beginning writers who think you can just write your first draft and hand it in.