Life & Wisdom Quote by Colleen McCullough

The glamour myth of the novelist as a conduit for effortless genius dies fast in Colleen McCullough's matter-of-fact arithmetic: one draft is just the admission ticket. Her intent is almost anti-romantic, a corrective aimed at aspiring writers who mistake speed for talent. By counting drafts so casually - five or six, with two explicitly reserved for polishing - she normalizes repetition as the real engine of artistry. Craft, not inspiration, is the flex.

The subtext is sharper than it looks. McCullough demotes research to a mid-process chore: "maybe I'll check my research". That "maybe" isn't laziness; it's a declaration of priority. First comes the living thing - voice, momentum, the messy heartbeat of the story. Facts are scaffolding, not the building. In a culture that fetishizes "worldbuilding" and Wikipedia-deep authenticity, she's arguing that fiction earns its authority through conviction and character, then gets its citations cleaned up later.

Context matters: McCullough wrote big, populous novels that have to feel inevitable on the page while being meticulously constructed underneath. Her method suggests a professional's relationship to revision: drafts aren't evidence you failed; they're evidence you're doing the job. The humor in her understatement does rhetorical work too, making discipline sound less like suffering and more like routine maintenance - the kind that turns raw material into something readers trust.