Aggression, the writer's main source of energy.

The best is good enough for me.

A professional football team warms up grimly and disparately, like an army on maneuvers: the ground troops here, the tanks there, the artillery and air force over there.

Basketball teams, after the perfunctory lay-up drill, fall into the crowded isolation and personal style of 10 city kids shooting at the same basket or playing one-on-one.

Writing a first draft is like groping one's way into a dark room, or overhearing a faint conversation, or telling a joke whose punchline you've forgotten. As someone said, one writes mainly to rewrite, for rewriting and revising are how one's mind comes to inhabit the material fully.