I sometimes begin a drawing with no preconceived problems to solve—
with no conscious aim; but, as my mind takes in what is so produced,
a point arrives where some idea crystallizes,
and then a control and ordering begins to take place.

—Henry Moore

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Finish the thing before you start revising.
If you’re working on chapter three and you discover you have to go back
and plant the butler in chapter one,
scribble a note to yourself and keep working on chapter three.
Otherwise you run the risk of having twenty versions of chapter one—
and nothing else.

—Marta Randall

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 Everyone is unique. Find out what you have to say that no one else can say;
then perfect the way to say it. That’s all any writer has to sell.
Anybody who can do it can sell anything they write.

—James Gunn

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Edit thyself.
(Learn the big difference between what’s interesting to you
and what’s interesting—period.)

—Larry Strawther

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Except as we venture to create,
we cannot project ourselves
beyond ourselves to serve and lead.

—Robert K. Greenleaf

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My wife took a look at the first version of something I was writing not long ago and said,
“Dammit, man, that’s high school stuff.”
I have to tell her to wait until the seventh draft, it’ll work out all right.
I don’t know why that should be so, that the first or second draft of everything
I write reads that way.

—James Thurber

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