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Maybe other writers have perfect first drafts, but I am not one of them. I always try to get the book as tight as I can, but you reach a point as the author where you have lost all perspective.

Unfortunately, there's still a lot of beginning writers who think you can just write your first draft and hand it in.

First drafts are never any good - at least, mine aren't.

I dread first drafts! I worry each day that it won't come, that nothing will happen.

I'm not a fast writer, and I find the process of writing a first draft to be painful and frustrating. Usually, I start with a character, a premise, and some image that gives me a particular feeling.

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.

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.

I was aware that there is an expectation that writers inevitably falter at this stage, that they fail to live up to the promise of their first successful book, that the next book never pleases the way the prior one did. It simply increased my sense of being challenged.

Although every writer dreams of getting it right on the first pass, very few succeed.

Writing the last page of the first draft is the most enjoyable moment in writing. It's one of the most enjoyable moments in life, period.