Rough Drafts Quotes

• News is only the first rough draft of history.

  Alan Barth

  News, Firsts, Rough

  "The New Republic" by Herbert David Croly, volume 108, p.677, 1943.

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• The first rough draft of history.

  Ben Bradlee

  Firsts, Journalism, Rough

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• Sure God created man before woman, but then again you always make a rough draft before creating the final masterpiece.

  Robert Bloch

  Women, Creating, Finals

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• I hate first drafts, and it never gets easier. People always wonder what kind of superhero power they'd like to have. I wanted the ability for someone to just open up my brain and take out the entire first draft and lay it down in front of me so I can just focus on the second, third and fourth drafts.

  Judy Blume

  Hate, People, Focus

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• It also signals to me, when I pick up a pencil, that this is a rough draft. This is not going anywhere, and no one's going to see it. You have permission to make all the mistakes you want. It signals freedom to me, and it signals mistakes.

  Lily King

  Mistake, Want, Permission

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Having done television for almost 20 years now, a pilot is kind of like a rough draft. It's like bringing people into your ultrasound and hooking up to the monitor and going, "Isn't my baby beautiful?" "Yeah. I can only see the outline of it, but it looks like it might be."

  Matt Bomer

  Beautiful, Baby, Ultrasounds

  Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. June 28, 2016.

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• The dictionary is, however, only a rough draft.

  Monique Wittig

  Language, Rough, Dictionary

  Monique Wittig, Sande Zeig (1979). “Lesbian Peoples: Material for a Dictionary”, Avon Books

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• Let me back up a little and tell you why I prefer writing to real life: You can rewrite. A novel, for example, can be cleaned up, altered, trimmed, improved. Life, on the other hand, is one big messy rough draft.

  Harlan Coben

  Real, Writing, Hands

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• Because your goal is a complete rough draft of a novel, and every rough draft, by being complete, is perfect.

  Jane Smiley

  Perfect, Goal, Novel

  Jane Smiley (2008). “13 Ways of Looking at the Novel”, p.220, Anchor

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• If I had to write a rough draft, all the way through and then go back and start over, I probably would just stop writing. I wouldn't find that interesting. I would feel that I had committed so many things to the paper that I couldn't easily undo because one thing leads to the next, the interconnectedness, the sequences would make it very hard to change something that simply didn't work.

  Dean Koontz

  Writing, Interesting, Starting Over

  "The Rumpus Interview With Dean Koontz". Interview with Ben Pfeiffer, therumpus.net. December 21, 2015.

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• I am somebody who usually writes out the rough draft in longhand. Then I type it into the computer, and that is where I do my editing. I find that if I write it on the computer, I go too quick. So I like getting that first draft out and then typing it in; you are less self-conscious about it.

  Barack Obama

  Writing, Editing, Self

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• I often wonder: suppose we could begin life over again, knowing what we were doing? Suppose we could use one life, already ended, as a sort of rough draft for another? I think that every one of us would try, more than anything else, not to repeat himself, at the very least he would rearrange his manner of life, he would make sure of rooms like these, with flowers and light ... I have a wife and two daughters, my wife's health is delicate and so on and so on, and if I had to begin life all over again I would not marry. ... No, no!

  Anton Chekhov

  Daughter, Flower, Thinking

  Anton Chekhov (2012). “The Three Sisters”, p.11, Courier Corporation

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• Only ambitious nonentities and hearty mediocrities exhibit their rough drafts. It's like passing around samples of sputum.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Writing, Ambitious, Mediocrity

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• But it isn’t a rough draft either. The one I turned in several months ago was rough. There were some bad plot holes, some logical inconsistencies, pacing problems, and not nearly enough lesbian unicorns.

  Patrick Rothfuss

  Writing, Plot, Months

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• Journalism is not easy. It's the first rough draft. I don't think you need to wait around until you have the definitive thing. You record what's there; don't delude yourself that this is the ultimate historical view.

  Harold Evans

  Thinking, Views, Waiting

  "Harold Evans Sees Bright Future for Print-on-Demand Newspapers". Interview by Mark Glaser, mediashift.org. October 29, 2009.

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• I have friends who are capable of writing a very rough draft and then going back and embroidering - they're sort of the cathedral builders of fiction. I never really know what I'm doing, and all my pleasure's on the level of the line. It's a weird way to move forward. It's kind of like a way to caterpillar your way through these great woods. The best ones, whatever I feel like I'm writing about, some other secret thing will begin to come into focus.

  Karen Russell

  Moving, Writing, Focus

  "Karen Russell’s Fantastical World". Interview with Maddie Oatman, www.motherjones.com. February 7, 2013.

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• [News is] a first rough draft of history.

  Phil Graham

  News, Firsts, Journalism

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• My mom was sarcastic about men. She would tell me Adam was the rough draft and Eve was the final product. She was a feminist minister, an earth mom who wore a bra only on Sundays.

  Daphne Zuniga

  Mom, Sarcastic, Sunday

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• Why was man created before woman? Because you always need a rough draft before the final copy.” – Chloe Traeger

  Jill Shalvis

  Men, Finals, Needs

  Jill Shalvis (2011). “Head Over Heels”, p.27, Hachette UK

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• Our mission is to speak the truth to power. We send home that first rough draft of history. We can and do make a difference in exposing the horrors of war and especially the atrocities that befall civilians.

  Marie Colvin

  War, Home, Differences

  "Marie Colvin: 'Our mission is to report these horrors of war with accuracy and without prejudice'" by Marie Colvin, www.theguardian.com. February 22, 2012.

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• Snooki is a bestselling author? Huh? What? I don't know if I should dumb down my book, shoot myself or find a publisher who'll settle for a rough draft written on a Pop-Tart and a coconut lotion handie.

  Geoffrey Hill

  Book, Dumb, Coconuts

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• It's my belief that you should never show your work to anyone in the publishing world until it shines like a diamond. Rough drafts don't shine, as a rule. Mine certainly didn't. That's why I was rejected for years and years.

  Patrick Rothfuss

  Writing, Years, Shining

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• I work sometimes from outlines, which are immediately abandoned. Sometimes, when I'm trying to find the characters, I'll sketch things out a bit. Sometimes, outlines help me aim a little bit, but I tend to find it's usually much more interesting, especially with the first draft, to spew it onto the page. I used to get very nervous that, if I write this first rough draft and I die that night, whoever finds it might think that I thought it was good. For me, it's much more important to get some general shape onto the page and later take all the time I need to refine it, fix it, and rewrite it.

  Paul Rudnick

  Character, Writing, Night

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• There's pressure to come up with something genius every time. I feel like I keep letting myself down with my Twitter posts. I have to start keeping a journal of rough drafts of prophetic ideas about the world.

  Ari Graynor

  Ideas, Pressure, Genius

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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