"The outline is 95 percent of the book. Then I sit down and write, and that's the easy part"
About this Quote
The phrasing matters. “Outline” is blunt, almost bureaucratic, the opposite of the muse-soaked language people use to make creativity sound mystical. Deaver is essentially arguing that art can be managerial. That’s subversive in a culture that treats planning as corporate and inspiration as pure. The subtext is a quiet rebuke to writers who fetishize drafting while avoiding the hard, humiliating work of committing to a structure: if the story collapses, it’s because you didn’t solve it when it was still cheap to solve.
Then there’s the psychological trick: calling the writing “easy” isn’t a dismissal of craft so much as a reframing of labor. Outlining is where you confront the blank page, the dead ends, the logic gaps. Drafting becomes execution, not existential dread. In an era of productivity culture, Deaver’s method risks sounding like content-factory talk, yet it also reads as a humane survival strategy: reduce suffering by moving the struggle to a phase where you can think clearly, not perform beautifully.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Deaver, Jeffery. (2026, January 15). The outline is 95 percent of the book. Then I sit down and write, and that's the easy part. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-outline-is-95-percent-of-the-book-then-i-sit-143046/
Chicago Style
Deaver, Jeffery. "The outline is 95 percent of the book. Then I sit down and write, and that's the easy part." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-outline-is-95-percent-of-the-book-then-i-sit-143046/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The outline is 95 percent of the book. Then I sit down and write, and that's the easy part." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-outline-is-95-percent-of-the-book-then-i-sit-143046/. Accessed 10 Feb. 2026.
