Social media, SEO, marketing and writingWrite a Million Words and Throw Them All Away
Robert Louis Stevenson was a hard-working novelist though a semi-invalid. While lying in bed during one illness, he started a new work and emerged with the full manuscript after writing non-stop for days. He read it to his wife, who criticized it.
Stevenson became enraged and threw the manuscript into the fire, saying his wife was right about it. He promptly returned to his bed with pencil and fresh paper.
He wrote three more days with little sleep and emerged again with a completely new manuscript of the same idea. The slender 149-page book, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde, was published in 1886 for one shilling. When the London Times praised the new book, it quickly became a best seller, selling 40,000 copies in six months.
The world of published novels includes such memorable classics as Call of the Wild, The Time Machine, The Power and the Glory, The Catcher in the Rye, Fahrenheit 451, How Green Was My Valley, Great Expectations, War of the Worlds, The Great Gatsby, A Tale of Two Cities, This Side of Paradise, Gone With the Wind, David Copperfield, Little Women, Doctor Zhivago, What Makes Sammy Run? and modern works such as Executive Orders, The Firm, Microserfs, A Dangerous Fortune, The First Wives Club, Neuromancer, Snow Crash, and many more.
Ah, the novel. How many have vowed to write a novel and see it published? Lots of people. Just completing one, hopefully a worthy book, is a considerable achievement.
There is no guarantee that if you get a good novel idea you’re going to actually develop it. Many have no doubt thought of good novel ideas but never got around to writing even the first page. A good idea coupled with the desire to develop it can form a strong combination. If the desire to write is there and the idea keeps asking to be developed, this may be enough to get you started.
I am reminded by a line by Jerry Pournelle that goes something like, “In order to become a writer, all you have to do is write a million words and throw them all away.”
A million words. Ready? Set. Type!
