Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something – anything – down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft – you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft – you fix it up. And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it’s loose or cramped or decayed, or even, god help us, healthy.
— Anne Lamott from Bird by Bird
Still a classic. And I hated it the first time I read it, nearly fifteen years ago in a writing workshop. This is only partially true, though. I think most of us need more than three drafts before we have something resembling literature.
