First drafts are for learning ...

First drafts are for learning what your novel or story is about. Revision is working with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to re-form it.... The first draft of a book is the most uncertain-where you need guts, the ability to accept the imperfect until it is better.

Bernard Malamud

Quotes from the same author

It's one thing for a man not to know, not to have learned; it's another not to be able to live by what one does know.

Bernard Malamud

The great thing about writing: Stay with it ... ultimately you teach yourself something very important about yourself.

Bernard Malamud

All my life I wanted to accomplish something worthwhile-a thing people will say took a little something.

Bernard Malamud

The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly.

Bernard Malamud

The past exudes legend: one can't make pure clay of time's mud.

Bernard Malamud