“If someone told me in advance that I was about to write thousands of pages that I would have to throw out, I probably would have trouble writing those pages, but thankfully I’m not told that in advance, and once those sentences have been written I can’t get the time back. It’s what economists call sunk costs. And the fact is, nothing is a waste. The bad sentences are investments in the good sentences, the bad days in the good days. Another way to put it is that those initial drafts are part of the discovery process. They’re helping you figure out who your characters are and where your story lies.”
–Joshua Henkin