Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
All the revision in the world will not save a bad first draft: for the architecture of the thing comes, or fails to come, in the first conception, and revision only affects the detail and ornament, alas!
I took an interest in the Civil Rights Movement. I listened to Martin Luther King. The Vietnam War was raging. When I was 18, I was eligible for the draft, but when I went to be tested, I didn't qualify.
I didn't think I was going to be drafted, to be honest. I'm so serious. I mean, wholeheartedly, too. I don't know. I didn't realize it, probably, until about a week and a half, two weeks before the Draft.
You have to constantly work on your script if it needs it. You don't accept, 'Oh, I did a draft and...' No, it's your responsibility to work on the script as much as possible and make it better and better.
Even the draft dodgers are not pursued and hounded. They are here on our streets, most of them... unless they are breaking Canadian laws .. are getting American dollars from Ma and Pa at home to spend here.
When you're a litigator, you write so much, so many briefs, over and over again, that you're kind of really focused on one document and have draft after draft, and really pay attention to every single word.
NRDC has helped bring hope spots to more of our shared ocean waters. We helped draft and pass a California law creating a network of underwater parks stretching from the Oregon border to the Mexican border.
Back then I said to myself 'screw football.' Actually I just took part in this camp as there was nothing better for me to do. They also didn't draft me because they thought I was too wild and undisciplined.
During my second draft pass on my last book I made 20,000 words happen in a week, which is practically supernatural for me, and it would never have been possible without three nights in a hotel in my own city.
I don't like re-writing very much. The fourth and the fifth draft - that's too much like work. There's not much inspiration about it, and the lawyerly side kicks in - being very careful and somewhat technical.
I think that many of the issues they were facing in South Africa were the same as those I was singing about. Conscription, resisting the draft, government repression - I mentioned all those things in my songs.
Once I've got the first draft down on paper then I do five or six more drafts, the last two of which will be polishing drafts. The ones in between will flesh out the characters and maybe I'll check my research.
I'm OK with having a really good football player with a chip on his shoulder because he's going to come to prove to not only the people that didn't draft him, but himself, that I'm a pretty good football player.
Fox came to us with the concept for ICE AGE and they came to us with the first draft of the script. They also gave us a mandate to make it into a comedy from what was previously a rather dramatic action concept.
If I'm really rolling with a short story, I work on it everywhere and end up with a finished draft in a couple months, but a novel really demands that I step out of my life and vanish into the world of the book.
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.
It is crystal clear to me that if Arabs put down a draft resolution blaming Israel for the recent earthquake in Iran it would probably have a majority, the U.S. would veto it and Britain and France would abstain.
My philosophy is that you don't motivate players with speeches; you have motivated players that you draft. That's where they come in, and those are the guys that are competitive. You can not teach competitiveness.
I try not to think too much about an audience when I'm writing the first draft of a book - at that stage, the prospect of anyone reading what I've written would be enough to scare me into setting my laptop on fire.
First, you need to write the script, re-work on lots of things. First draft, second draft, once the final script is ready then you visualize which actors fits the role in that the particular script they've written.
During the Vietnam era, more than 30,000 draft dodgers and deserters sought harbor in cities like Montreal and Toronto, where public opposition to the war was strong and most residents didn't question their motives.
If I'm working on a poem, it's at the forefront of my mind; I'm working on it when I'm cooking dinner or stretched out on the sofa. But if I don't really have it by the 10th draft, I know it just isn't going to jell.
I think I realized very early on that you can spend a lot of time constructing a really perfect scene in final draft and just end up throwing it away because you didn't figure out that mathematics of the story first.
Before the Civil War, Canada was at the top of the underground railroad. If you made it into Canada, you were safe unless someone came and hauled you back. That was also true during the Vietnam War for draft resisters.
I remember placing the New Era cap on my head at the 2017 NBA draft - that moment changed my life. I'm excited to be a part of a brand that has a strong sport heritage and look forward to being a part of their history.
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.
Write with abandon and no constraints for first draft. Cut brutally and save in separate files on second draft. Add conflict; don't be afraid to make your characters suffer. Read what you love. Write what you love. Love.
I had written in another draft a completely different kind of fight, but they said they couldn't afford to shoot it. They needed a fight scene, though, so I was told to put a fight scene in, but not the one I had written.
The NCAA model is outdated. If Steve Serby's a great player in high school, and an agent wants to represent you and wants to advance you money as a loan based on the fact that you're gonna be a high draft choice, so be it.
I have not seen a true grounds-up revolution from a bunch of companies getting together. It takes one company to put it together, then people draft off of that, but they don't build it top to bottom with a specific vision.
'Rent' was a special project for me. It was my first notable screenplay job. I worked with two wonderful directors on it, starting with Spike Lee in the summer of 2001. I wrote a draft for Spike and he was really good to me.
To have someone like Clint Eastwood come along and shoot your first draft as written is just any screenwriter's dream. And Clint is very straightforward. If it's good enough to get his attention, it's good enough to produce.
As a matter of policy from the beginning with our team, there have been three things we've said we won't draft a player: if they've been involved in domestic violence, drug abuse, or if they show lack of respect for authority.
I think I got spoiled and that writing a short story and getting it published, or writing a novel and getting it published, you pretty much get to do the first, second and third draft yourself without a whole lot of interference.
There are a lot of people, who want to be writers, who stumble at a blank page. You could imagine an algorithm that could give writers a first draft or a starter kit, so it could enable people to be more prolific in their writing.
Growing up, I didn't know anyone that was a watch collector or into watches, but I was always kind of curious about them. Before the NBA Draft, I knew I was going to get drafted, and I wanted to commemorate that by buying a watch.
For the Broncos, they're kind of in a rebuilding stage with a lot of young guys and here I am, 10 years in the league, ready to be a free agent. I think it was best for the Broncos to trade me for the draft picks and try to build.
To tell you the truth, I don't edit much at all. Most times, when I have finished the first draft, that's the book. Of course, I work on the page I am on until I am happy with it. I might even say that I try to state the landscape.
I certainly wanted to write a book that was honest about New Orleans without explaining it to death, so much so that the first draft contained references absolutely incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't lived here for several years.
It's still scary every time I go back to the past. Each morning, my heart catches. When I get there, I remember how the light was, where the draft was coming from, what odors were in the air. When I write, I get all the weeping out.
I write until the first draft is finished, and then I feel that I can get out. But, during the time of the writing of the first draft, I don't go out. I'm just locked away, writing. It's a time of meditation, of going into the story.
I write an actual script rather quickly - a draft will take me two weeks - but I write a lot of drafts. My big thing is I don't re-read. When I write, I never re-read back. I'll send it, because if I re-read back, it will cripple me.
There are producers, like the late Geoffrey Perkins, who have truly great ideas that will fire up your synapses and show you that handing in your first draft is not the end of a horrible process, but the beginning of a beautiful one.
Literature that keeps employing new linguistic and formal modes of expression to draft a panorama of society as a whole while at the same time exposing it, tearing the masks from its face - for me that would be deserving of an award.
If I wanted to be Rimbaud, what was I doing in graduate school? Trying to stay out of the army, of course. Graduate study gave me a draft deferment. But I also knew I lacked erudition and polish and was often sunk in forlorn reveries.
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.
To summarize, draft resistance can make use of the inegalitarian nature of American society as a technique for increasing the cost of American aggression, and it threatens values that are important to those in a decision-making position.
Which I would've done 'cause I volunteered for the draft which meant that I only had to do two years. But when the Cubans had missiles in the Canal and Kennedy made the extension, I was one of the ones who had enough time to be extended.
While the web is very much the first draft of history, a rough-cut, it still has to be good journalism, well-sourced, reliable. Clearly, the printed form is going to have more effort put into it, going to be more reflective and relevant.
I do try to deliver a solid first draft, meaning it's my tenth or twentieth draft and then I call it 'first' and hand it in, much to the chagrin of the studio sometimes when they look at the contract and go, 'You've passed your deadline.'