1Every experienced novelist learns sooner or later to distrust the perfect opening chapter of a new book.
2The first draft exists mainly so that the writer can discover what the story really wants to be.
3If you polish every sentence too early, you may polish away the very life that made it worth writing.
4I often tell my students to write badly on purpose when they are at the beginning.
5A rough page full of mistakes can always be improved later, but an empty page cannot be improved at all.
6The characters often reveal their true nature only after the writer has produced several careless chapters.
7Many successful writers delete half of their first draft without feeling any regret at all.
8The real work of the serious novelist only truly begins during the writing of the second draft.
9Revision is the stage where style, structure, and meaning finally come together as one whole.
10Some of the most celebrated novels in history went through more than ten complete rewrites before publication.
11Courage, not talent, is what finally carries a tired writer through that long and lonely process.