The most important advice I received about the writing craft came from an influential teacher and author named
Donald Murray. "Remember, Roy," he told me, "a page a day equals a book a year."
It did not seem possible, but I did the math. A double-spaced page
equals about 250 words. Now multiply 250 x 300 days (I'm taking 65 days
off!). That creates 75,000 words, more than enough for a book of 300
pages.
A page a day equals a book a year. That pace turned out to be too fast
for me. But from 2006 until 2016, I will have written five books in ten
years, all published by Little, Brown. So a less ambitious version of
Murray's advice would be, "A half-page a day equals a book every two
years." Still, pretty productive.
You would think such productivity would require a reliable method, a set
of reproducible steps. I've got a few tricks to share. But as I
describe what I learned from writing each book, you will notice that the
differences stand out as much as the recurring strategies.
So let's go back to the years preceding 2006, a time when I had already
written and published a number of academic texts and anthologies, but
nothing commercially viable. I was stuck. I pitched some ideas to
literary agent Jane Dystel, who said in quick succession: "No, no, and
no. What else have you got?"
"I'm writing these essays about writing," I said, in desperation. And so it began...