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The purpose of the first draft is not to get it right, but to get it written.

John Dufresne

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John Dufresne
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 30
Author
Novelist
Screenwriter
Worcester
Massachusetts
Written
Purpose
Firsts
First
Right
Draft

More quotes by John Dufresne

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Love is anticipation and memory, uncertainty and longing. It’s unreasonable, of course. Nothing begins with so much excitement and hope and pleasure as love, except maybe writing a story. And nothing fails as often, except writing stories. And like a story, love must be troubled to be interesting.
John Dufresne
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If you think about it, fiction is nothing more than gossip about the people you've made up.
John Dufresne
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I was always writing. I just didn't know if I was any good.
John Dufresne
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With each draft, the work gets better, and usually that means tighter. It means getting the precise word, not the approximate word.
John Dufresne
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Revision is not the end of the creative process, but a new beginning. It's a chance not just to clean up and edit, but to open up and discover. The energetic prose comes about from all the energy that went into crafting it, I suppose.
John Dufresne
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At the heart of all good fiction and at the heart of all good gossip is the same thing: trouble.
John Dufresne
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Reading honest literature makes you love the world. Knowledge and understanding are love. Reading educates our feelings and enhances our sympathy. When you read for understanding, you are fundamentally changed. You are a different person at the end of the story or the novel than you were when it began.
John Dufresne
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A pure love is a selfless love, but can desire ever be selfless?
John Dufresne
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Every person in therapy has a love disorder.
John Dufresne
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Fiction begins with the senses, and the senses go to work in a place.
John Dufresne
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In revision, your imagination becomes deeply engaged with your material. It's when you come to know your characters and begin to perceive their motivations and values.
John Dufresne
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Every act of loving affirms the goodness of the lover just because he is capable of loving and being loved.
John Dufresne
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Love is always a surprise and you never get it right.
John Dufresne
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Pleasure is, after all, a luxury. It's love that's essential.
John Dufresne
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The regional tags are often pejorative and dismissive. Don't think of place-bound stories, in other words, but of stories with a strong sense of place.
John Dufresne
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Place is character. And all writing is regional.
John Dufresne
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The landscape of childhood shapes us as it shapes the characters in our stories. You never forget the sacred places of your childhood.
John Dufresne
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There were the fairy tales my father told to me at bedtime. All the standards. I thought my father invented wolves.
John Dufresne
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I sat around the kitchen every Sunday afternoon listening to my mother and aunts talk about the people in the neighborhood. Gossip - I loved it. And that turns out to be the writer's job: to attend to the gossip and spread it as far as you can.
John Dufresne
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As a writer you can and should expect to hear conflicting responses to your story.
John Dufresne