Obviously, the final draft of a novel should have both a high quantity (by which I do not mean that it should be 700 pages long - but it needs to be long enough to fully explore your themes) and high quality. With the first draft, though, it seems like you can only really focus on one or the other.
I've tried both approaches, but admittedly the only completed first drafts I've written have come from doing NaNoWriMo. It has to be said that the pressure to finish and the sheer dedication you need to even start NaNo really do drive you to finish; but then at the end, while you do have a novel written, it's one made up of run-on sentences, grammar mistakes and bad metaphors.
Blasting out 50,000 words or more in four short weeks may seem like the best idea in the world. After all, it's only taken a month and you have a novel. The time might well be made up in editing, though; if you have a sloppy plot and plenty of filler, then it will take you a very long time to straighten out your ideas and achieve a coherent plot line, let alone quality writing.
I have a few novels with the first couple of chapters written and nothing more (clearly I'm not so good at writing without the pressure of NaNo) but there's one -- I've mentioned it before; it's about faeries -- that I've been writing on and off for the past sixth months. That novel is 11,000 words long - not bad. But at that rate it'll take me about three and a half years to write the first draft. Of course, I could be very happy with that draft. I might read it through and decide that the plot is smooth and enticing, that my characters have depth, and that most of my writing is good. Maybe I just need a few tweaks here and there and I'll be done.
Then again, I've heard several authors say that the funniest, the saddest, or the most memorable scenes in their novels came out in the revisions. John Green, my favourite author, stated that he had deleted 95% of the first draft of his first novel by the time it was published. One of Maureen Johnson's favourite tips is "dare to suck" - i.e., don't worry about writing something terrible, as long as you've written it. After all, even the most muddled and bizarre of novels will have its good parts, and you can always improve it later. Sometimes the simple fact that you need to write something right now but you've no idea what happens in this part of the novel can lead to very interesting scenes. When I found the characters of my novel stuck on a small ship for a few weeks with no plot to speak of, I added in a new character, and she became my absolute favourite character, even though she's only in it for two chapters.
A confession: I'm not actually going to give answer to this dilemma. On the one hand, the 11,000 words that took me six months to write make up some of the best writing I've ever achieved. On the other hand, at this rate I'll have left school and graduated from university by the time I've finished just the first draft.
Different things work for different people. Doing both is fun, because you get the satisfaction of having written a novel while also being able to tell yourself that you're a good writer, because look at what you can do with words when you take your time. Figure out what's best for you, and persevere. You'll get there in the end, either way.
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