“Writers think with their soul and draft from their heart”

“For writing a first draft requires from the writer a peculiar internal state which ordinary life does not induce. ... how to set yourself spinning?”

“No thinking - that comes later. You must write your first draft with your heart. You rewrite with your head. The first key to writing is... to write, not to think!”

“To tell a love story true, a romance writer must bare hearts, souls and bodies.”

“For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous.In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to writereally, really shitty first drafts.”

“All good writers write [terrible first drafts.] This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts. . . I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much. We do not think that she has a rich inner life or that God likes her or can even stand her. (Although when I mentioned this to my priest friend Tom, he said you can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”