Think Short Stories, not Novels...

I once heard a recording of a lecture given by the great science fiction writer, Ray Bradbury, to creative writing students at an American university. He said something like this: the big mistake aspiring writers make is that they all want to write the novel of the century. They lock themselves in their garret and grind and grind and write and write, and, after a year, their first novel is finished. And....it's crap. Let's be honest, your first five or six novels are most likely going to be crap. So, after five or six years, you have gotten nowhere. Who can persevere through that much failure and rejection?

So, put the novel of the century on the back burner. Start more modestly. Write short stories. You can turn out a short story in a week. If you write a short story every week for a year, you have 52 short stories in your portfolio. It's impossible for anybody to write 52 short stories without there being at least one halfway decent story among them, worthy of publication. So now, after a year, you have a success under your belt. The following year, you will get five short stories published. The following year, 20...Then you can try your hand at the novel of the century. And...it will still be crap. But, at least you are working from a position of success. You have established yourself as a writer worthy of publication. A much stronger position to persevere from - and you will eventually produce a novel worthy of publication.

Enter Read.Cash

How about extending Bradbury's idea from short stories to Read.Cash articles? The thing about writing is, the more you do it, the better you become at it. Imagine if you write an article a day for a year. 365 articles. Is it possible to publish 365 articles on Read.Cash without gaining some kind of traction on the platform? Watch this space...