I do a first draft as passionately and as quickly as I can. I believe a story is valid only when it's immediate and passionate, when it dances out of your subconscious. If you interfere in any way, you destroy it.
Acting without knowing takes you right off the cliff.
Since we have been gifted with long lives, the least we can do is pass that gift on in inanimate objects—novels, poems, plays—books that rouse to life when scanned by a living eye. You must never receive a gift, ever, without returning the gift twice over. From Jesus of Nazareth to noon tomorrow, our baggage is the library and its silent speech. Each book is Lazarus, yes? And you the reader, by opening the covers, bid Lazarus to come forth. And he lives again, it lives again, the dead words warmed by your glance.