Drafts Quotes

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.

We go through, I think, six different drafts of each script. And then my shooting it is roughly, you know, fifteen percent of the total work that gets done on a show. Then it`s all post-production animation after that.

One of the things I noticed more in this draft than in any recent drafts was the importance of the character issue. Players who had baggage, like Justice, fell much farther than his talent dictated. But a lot of coaches didn`t want to take the chance.

Above all, a query letter is a sales pitch and it is the single most important page an unpublished writer will ever write. It`s the first impression and will either open the door or close it. It`s that important, so don`t mess it up. Mine took 17 drafts and two weeks to write.

I wasn`t involved, except to the degree that they sent me drafts of the script as the writer turned them in. They asked me at one point to write a memo about what I thought of it.

It is simply not part of my culture to preserve notes. I have never heard of a writer preserving his early drafts.

I don`t write drafts. I write from the beginning to the end, and when it`s finished, it`s done.

I keep the drafts of each poem in color-coded folders. I pick up the folders according to how I feel about that color that day.

I have a high guilt quotient. A poem can go through as many as 50 or 60 drafts. It can take from a day to two years-or longer.

This is not a screenplay. I don`t do twenty drafts. I`m not going to show this to you until it`s published or accepted for publication. You can make whatever suggestions you want, but I probably will ignore them entirely.