Joe Konrath is one of the authors at the forefront of the ebook revolution.

How did he get there? By working his ass numb at the typewriter / computer and getting printed in 2001. He then worked his feet numb by doing many book signings across the country. Now? He is sharing tips for how to take advantage of the ebook craze – preaching involvement in Amazon’s Kindle and SmashWords projects.

What was Joe saying about “ebooks” 5 years ago on his blog?

Basically, he thought they were going to take off.

Here is one of Joe’s posts from 5 years back – “Ebooks!” ->

The post shows Joe was thinking about ebooks 5 years ago – by giving 2 of his books away for free on his blog. He was also already marketing himself like a madman – in any way he could.

Why is that important?

Because this is the model you could be using today. If you ever hope to make it as an author – you’ll need to market yourself exhaustively, and hit every channel you can – using every opportunity to give it your best effort to help someone find your books, or like them once they do find them.

A five-year plan is NOT THAT LONG to change your entire life.

What were you doing 5 years ago?

Me? I was in Thailand like I am now. I was wondering – what the hell am I going to do in Thailand to make a lot of money and support myself and payoff debts from the past?

I did start blogging back in 2006. I started a few blogs – ThaiPulse.com, AimforAwesome.com, and then a handful of blogs on Blogger.com that went basically nowhere. Over the past few years I’ve written 20+ books, wrote thousands of posts on blogs I own, created 280+ videos at youtube (http://www.youtube.com/user/thaipulsedotcom), and read a lot about technology, marketing, ebooks, and anything else I thought would help me get to where I want to be.

Though five-years ago I had book ideas in my head, and had even started some – writing 50 pages on a couple of books – I just never got going whole hog. I didn’t see that ebooks were going to kill it later. I sure didn’t think of myself as a writer that could sell enough books to keep me and my family alive.

Now, five-years later and I’m on the verge of something. If I could just slap the side of my head hard enough to shake shit up – and yet, not destroy my creative gray mush – I could go full-throttle and start banging out good books. Soon I’d be cranking out great books. You know what? If only one time in the next 20 years of writing I nail it and write a blockbuster (netbuster) – we’ll all sit at our favorite paid fishing lake drinking Beerlao and putting catfood and bread on hooks for the monster catfish.

Hell, we might even go see Chiang Mai – the only place in Thailand we’ve never come close to.

The time is NOW.

Waking the hell up and realizing that today is the start of the next 5 years – is in order. I’m hitting you with it right now. You can’t ignore it.

Piece a plan together, and start hammering it out – working on your writing and marketing yourself everydamnday for the next 5 years – I think you can be successful. Hell, I think non-writers could be successful too. I wasn’t a writer by any means. I was a thinker… not a writer. Now I’m trying to do something with all the thinking going on. Something useful. I tired of firing off nerve impulses that got lost in the space of my head, not doing any good for anybody – including me.

If you’re a writer on ANY level – you can make it work. I know you can. There’s nobody reading this that cannot make it happen.

Just go.

Guys like Joe are 5 years ahead of you. Today Joe is selling some ungodly number of ebooks per day – 600+ I think it is. I get bored reading how many thousands of dollars he is making a month, but I think it’s something like $20,000+. That’s USD folks.

In 5 years you’ll either be looking back at 2011 – 2016 as the best time you ever spent on yourself…

Or, you’ll be looking ahead to 2021 as the date when you finally pull it all together.

Me?

I’ll be absolutely killing it by 2016.

Write that down.

I’ll be KILLING IT I said!

New Amazon Kindle Fire Color Multitouch Tablet – eReader:

New Amazon Kindle Touch eReader:

New Amazon Kindle eReader:

There must be a couple of million people that are considering writing careers at the moment.

Maybe you’re one. Maybe you read a couple articles each day about writing. Some of you I know read a boatload of stuff everyday – it’s not like there is a shortage of it online. If you read a lot, you probably know your shit. There is a lot to know, but it could be summed up in a 100 page book. It isn’t brain surgery. I think I’ve proven that by having a modicum of success. Never used that m-word before, but it seemed appropriate. Spelling? WhoTF cares? I think I nailed it, but, if not – you know what I’m saying – right?

I am no writer.

Let me qualify that. I’ve written my ass purple… but, I’m not a great writer in anyone’s hallucination. I know that. That’s not even a consideration when I sit down to write a book. For the masses to call me a great writer – I’d need to conform to some ideal that has been built over the ages. That will never be me. I’ll never be a great writer like anyone from the past was.

I never wanted to be a writer until the world started changing. I wrote a 60+ page rant about the world, god, and life back in about 1994. I had a website called “MindBombs.com”. I had 500 – 1,000 people per day reading my trash on mb.com.

It was eye-opening. WhoTF would read my rants?

Harder to believe still – who would agree with any of it?!

I met some amazing people as a result of that site, and that long rant in particular. Mick, Eve, Stu, Jon, and about 70 people I can’t even remember any longer.

It was bliss to sit down and bang something out on my 8 pound laptop brickpad – FTP it up online, and get immediate feedback from it. I remember daily arguments, stroking, threats, compliments, and even stalkers. It got me into a frame of mind where I thought – writing is cool. Fuckme if I can’t write. I’m a writer. I’m no kind of writer I ever knew, but, I’m obviously getting something across to a lot of people. I was pissing off just as many as I was placating. It was a cool feeling. I like to affect people – positively or negatively – take your pick.

What a writer is has changed dramatically since the internet e-zombied humanity.

Used to be, you had to write for an editor. Where the hell did SHE go? There isn’t one any longer. Writers have just one goal now… affect someone with their words. By telling a story, or presenting some information, writers are trying to hit someone in the head – and get something across.

There is no middle (wo)man any longer. Just reach out and smack that reader right on the eyeballs.

Can this writing thing work for you?

I wasn’t sure I was going to get around to the point, but hell – why not?

If you can put sentences together in groups and people ‘get you’ – you can write for a living.

It’s as easy as that. No joke. Just start whacking it out, and you’ll be a writer. You’ll support yourself with writing. You’ll do more than you ever thought you could do in the field.

I know it’s this easy, because that’s all I did. I just started writing and I haven’t stopped for 5 years now. I’ve written all sorts of things – and all of it has helped get me to where I am now. Not that I’m anywhere all that great, but if I wanted to, I could stop doing everything else – and just write. I could support my family. I could take us all on vacation to the states… we could take a couple months off to travel Asia. We could do whatever people do that don’t want for anything.

And I’m telling you, I am NO writer.

What I do have is something inside that pushes me.

I have this drive to accomplish that never lets up (for long). When I finish anything I set out to, say an article for instance, it’s a pat on my back that I need but never got.

I never got pats on the back as a kid.

Dad wasn’t there and mom was working. Babysitter didn’t give a shit. So, as an adult I incessantly accomplish stuff so I can pat myself on the back. That’s what drives me. I’m driven like few other people I’ve known in the past, and nobody I know now.

If you just write – if you just found the drive, whether it’s aspiration or desperation, you’ve gotta find the drive to just GO and start spitting out books consistently… continually.

Or, stop the foolishness today – and go find something else you’re really excited about doing for a living. Teenagers are writing books that are killing it on Amazon. People that have never written squat in their lives are publishing on Amazon, and they might not be killing it with that first book… but they’re learning a lot. They’re throwing shit up on the wall to see what sticks. You’ve gotta do this too – get to work people, stop reading and just start DOING.

Tomorrow I’m going to write a short story. I’m going to write 3,000 words plus or minus, depends how the story goes. Make yourself a goal to do the same.

Stop reading about other people’s successes, or you’ll never find your own.

I’m less of a writer than you’ll ever be! Now, kick my ass and make me feel it!

My friend Steve, a writer and online entrepreneur, from Pennsylvania is finally, after 5 years of wanting to make the move – moving to Thailand on June 7th.

I met Steve online because he also has a Thailand-focused site and we teamed up on some things to help each other out. It’s been about 3-4 years maybe that I’ve known him, and yet I have not met him. He was close in Phuket one time as he visited with his Thai wife, but we just couldn’t coordinate our schedules to meet up.

This is the age of online friends – right? You might know someone for years and years – and not meet them in person until much later, or maybe never. There are many people – even some in Thailand – that I’d call friends, but that I haven’t met yet. Probably most I will not meet. Our relationship is defined online – and in person, we’d have nothing more to offer each other. Weird to think of it that way, but that’s the reality of life today.

Steve married a girl from Thailand he met through a dating service in Bangkok. You might think those things never work, but Steve found a gem – and his wife, also – found a gem of a guy through it – so – it does work sometimes. They’ve been married for over 3 years now – maybe 4, and are living in PA. until the 7th of June and then they’ll all arrive in BKK. I say “all” because there are three of them now – they have a new baby girl, Alivia too!

When I moved to Thailand back in 2004 I did it almost on a whim. What the hell to do when your world crumbles around you and you’re faced with he prospect of a profound (and backward) change in your life? Go the other way. I went to the other side of the world and for the last, almost 7 years, made it work. Today I can say that I’m as happy as I could possibly be. I have a lovely wife and baby… mother in law lives with us – and we’re all happy as clams.

I think so many times people have a catastrophic event happen in their lives – and they get sucked down the toilet bowl of life – without making the required changes to turn it around. Staying in the same place after such an event – it can be impossible to turn your life around. The same environment, people, reminders, are all there and hammering you in the head every time you experience them. Instead of fighting that fight… change your entire life… you might move to Australia, Canada, Hawaii, Cambodia, or Thailand.

Or you might move to the next state over. You might fly to Fiji.

It’s possible to start over – whenever you choose to. You might not think so – but, you know, there are so many people (by some estimates 100,000+) that are living in Thailand from overseas that are making it work.

Why can’t you?

Can you speak English? Are you under 60? You can teach English in a school in Thailand.

Are you over 60? Do you have $500 a month to survive on that would follow you to Thailand? You can move here and survive on that. I survived on much less than that for 1.5 years.

I know a guy in the Philippines that is living on between $500 and $1,000 per month. I know a guy living in Cambodia on $500/mth.

Steve is coming to Thailand with his family, and he’ll be just fine. The guy has more stuff going online making him money than anyone else I know – he’s spread out – diversified. If one thing dies, he’ll ramp something else up. His lovely wife will work in a hospital in Thailand, like she did in the USA for a couple years.

Moving across the globe isn’t right for everyone… but, if your life is junk at the moment… what is stopping you from making the big change you need to make?

If you’re a writer – the opportunity to move and survive in another country on your writing skills – has never been better. Look at me! If someone were to critique my writing – I’d be found lacking in many areas. Punctuation and grammar not being the end of it – I assure you!

If I can make it… can’t you make it?

There are possibilities all around you – and you’re not looking at them all. I know that. You probably have never considered for longer than a few minutes, whether or not you could move across the globe and radically change your life.

Give that some thought if you’re in a bad place right now… it just might be doable.

Look at me. Look at Steve. Look at Lee. Look at Dennis. Look at 100,000 expats just in Thailand alone that are making it work with whatever they’ve got.

Here’s a top selling book from yours truly about “Moving to Thailand – Your 2nd Life Begins!”

I think you could make it work too…

I basically started writing a little bit back in 1996 – doing a journal about some Buddhist meditation I was having fun with. I didn’t write my first full-length (125,000 words) fiction book until 2007. Since then I’ve written more than probably 99% of you reading this. I’m not bragging – just telling it how it is. I routinely write 4,000 words per day – but often I go WAY over that and I’m writing 15,000 words in a day. I had no idea how much I enjoyed writing – and I still don’t let myself believe it. I don’t remind myself of it – I just write because it’s a way I can produce something continuously day after *&^%ing day.

And yeah, it IS fun.

If you too have talent – and you know it – you might be asking yourself…

What’s my problem? There are hundreds and thousands of authors making a living through their writing – and I can’t even make half-a-living from it. What part of the equation am I missing?

It’s simple really.

You’re lacking in one of 2 areas:

2. Telling people you have stuff written.

There’s nothing else to the equation for success really. If you already write amazing stuff – the next step is to market it. If you just have these mind-stopping ideas in mind and never get them written down in a tangible format that people can purchase – then you’re going nowhere at all – except in your mind.

For a brief time I was one of those writers – about a year. I knew I could write. I knew that if I could kick a profound case of ADD/ADHD I’d be writing up a storm – and selling stuff. Problem was – I focused on the “How” of the game for far too long – not writing – just planning.

I know two writers out there that are head, shoulders, assholes and elbows above the pack. They have a way with the written word that brings tears to my eyes.

They are my brother and sister.

These are two of the most talented writers on the planet – of that I am certain.

Both of them know they can write. They know they are gifted writers.

So why is my sister working in a retail store and my brother doing software testing with Kodak?

They can’t see that NOW is the time to throw the rest of their lives out the window and focus 100% on WRITING – nothing else.

Maybe you can’t see it either. Me – I fully see it because finally I’m selling enough books that it means something now. It took a lot of work to get over a dozen books online – but, you know what? It wasn’t that damn difficult! I can easily see producing another 10-12 books in 2011 and doubling my book sales. If I tripled it – I’d be happy as spit. What would you do to sell $3,000 in books per month? Yeah, well you don’t need to cut off your arm or gift your newborn to someone – you can just write a number of books and make it happen.

Once you start writing and selling – it’s addictive. You’ve probably sold something you created before – whether it was a song, a book, an article, or comments on someone else’s blog – god forbid. No matter what it was – it gave your brain a tiny DING – a shot of endorphins that instantly hooked you.

Getting paid to write something creates an obsessive behavior – obsessive writing.

If you can just sell SOMETHING you’ve written – you’d see that.

Recently my brother wrote me email… He told me that the short book he wrote almost a year ago and put on Amazon Kindle – had some sales he didn’t know happened. He was finally psyched up about the prospect of writing and getting paid for it. I have tried for almost 2 decades to convince the guy to stop everything he was doing – and write, write, write, write, write. My words went into his ear and out his ear without any action taking place.

All it took to get him seeing success was selling a few ebooks on Amazon Kindle.

That might be what you need too. If you are a good writer – and you have written something  you can sell on Amazon Kindle – start the game today and upload it. Create a description. Choose some keywords. Find someone to make you a decent book cover image (I’ll do it for $50) – and start the first day of the rest of your writing life.

I’d love to have your feedback about this – what is the first thing you ever wrote that you considered any good. Not so much that others considered good, but that YOU did.

I wrote an essay on Freedom in grade school that won a contest. Did I think it was good? Not really.

I wrote a creative story in 9th grade for a writing class that was WAY out there. The teacher thought it was genius. I thought I was just throwing shit on the paper so I could get through the class.

I wrote a lot of poems that I liked early on. I guess maybe that’s when I really started liking writing. What was the first one I liked, I’m not sure. But it was probably the one I’ve already posted here:

Sing a New Song

Maybe you have a similar experience while writing books…

I get 30-50 pages into writing a book when it happens. Inevitably there is a break of a couple days as I take care of other projects. When I return I don’t remember exactly what I wrote anymore. The big picture is lost to my frayed ADD mind.

Frustration drives me to print everything out and put it on the walls in front of me so I can see it all at the same time. I can’t see it, it’s not big enough.

I’m annoyed to no end by not seeing the complete story as I add to it. I want to be able to see it all and make references to things I said earlier without searching for minutes at a time. I want to know everything I wrote intimately – and since that’s impossible after 50 pages or so, I want to see it in front of me – in total. The computer screen is so limited – it gives me about 16 lines. I like to see big words so I’m at 14pt Courier New. Huge right? Not for me, it’s just right.

My brain is like a sieve. If I’m focused on a project for a day, a couple of days, I can retain a lot of information about what I just did. Focus or not, after 4-5 days memory starts dissolving.

Not just that.

My brain starts banging out new ideas. Not ideas that go along with the original, but on tangents. One or two tangents become more important than the original. The original project dies and the new tangential projects take off for about 50 pages, 5 days – whatever comes first – and fades away too, just like the original idea.

Such is the suck of an ADD/ADHD mind. To say it’s a disability is a vast understatement for anyone that needs to hold a focus for more than a couple minutes, hours, or days.

Kicking ass and GSD (getting shit done) is an achievement for long projects.

Are you the same?

I’m 50 pages into… “Kicking Life’s Ass!“. I’m at that point where I need to find 5 days of silence and kick this book’s ass real solid.

Freelance writers don’t know where to focus.

Look at the long-term.

Do you want to:

1. Write for someone else the rest of your life?

2. Write for yourself for the rest of your life?

From there it gets really easy what you should be focusing on. I’m going to guess than NOBODY wants to write for someone else the rest of their lives. There are people that do, but they are anomalies and we don’t care about them. We care about us, and WE want to write for ourselves because… well, we’re all sorts of intelligent over here in this camp.

What is the path to being able to write for yourself as a long-term goal?

There are many paths, this is the one I’m suggesting everyone jump on as fast as you can.

1. Take a pulling-no-punches look at yourself. Are you a writer? Can you write? Have others said they LOVE how you write? Have you written something that has been read many times – 1,000? 10,000? 1 million times? Did you get great feedback on it? Or, are you someone that is dedicated to becoming a great writer?

There are writers that have it already, and there are writers that can get it after a lot of work. If you’re not one of those two people, choose another profession.

2. Forget writing articles that you hope to sell. It isn’t scalable. By writing one article and shopping it around, you are wasting heaps of time that you could be spending doing other things that are more productive.

3. Do write articles that get you noticed. Find top bloggers that are in the same niche that you want to write about. Create 5 titles of provocative, new, or cool articles that you offer to the blog owner and ask her if you could write one of them as a guest blogger there. Be ready to show prior articles as samples of your writing. Ideally you’d have your own blog, but not really necessary.

Write the hell out of that article and submit it. Your story will be seen by hundreds of thousands of people over time. And, you’ll get a link back to your website where you can start building a list of email subscribers using Aweber.com’s list-building service.

4. Write your own books. The world of book writing has just changed remarkably. Today I can write a 15,000 word book and sell it for $9.95 at Amazon or $29.95 at Clickbank.com or websites across the world if it’s a groundbreaking book with more information than anyone else has on a small niche topic.

When I say, “Write your own books” – I mean ebooks. Books, paper books, are dead. Don’t write another paper book in your life. Paper books are old, they are too long, they are a waste of paper, time, money, ideas, and they’re not the future. Switch now.

5. Keep writing your own books and selling them. Try hard to know who your customers are so you can send them notices of future books being released – which they may also buy. Build your brand. The more people that hear about you – the better you’ll do. You can do well being an asshole or a saint. You should probably choose which – now.

If you are going to be a writer, write for yourself. There is nothing more rewarding in life – career wise, than producing something unique and having other people that appreciate it – buy it.

Writing your own books and putting them up for sale gives you residual income where you are doing nothing but watching sales come into your email box. It makes for a glorious day when I wake up in the morning after 7 hours of sleep and see 10 book sales in my email. What makes it better is knowing that I’ll continue to get sales for the next couple years off those same books. The rate of sales may increase or decrease – but, I’ll make sales. Also, I know I can do many things to increase the rate of sales… it’s within my power to make myself a winner.

Strive to be a writer for yourself – not for corporations, not for search engines.

I did about 29 things today, and yet the only two questions that really matter are:

How much did I write today?

How well did I write today?

How much? About average, which is maybe 4,000 words. If I write 4,000 words  I give myself an “A”. It matters not whether what I wrote is publishable, for this question the only thing that mattters is quantity. What matters is that I wrote 4,000 words.

So, my average day is an “A” level effort in my own opinion. If you’re shooting for a “C” then you’re not all that into what you’re doing and maybe writing isn’t for you. Maybe you should take up internet marketing like everyone else that can’t write. Format resumes or something. Be honest with yourself. You should be able to regularly come up with “A” grades.

How well did I write today? I wrote some blog posts, some comments, and some email. It’s 7:30 pm and I haven’t written anything for my books yet. So, right now I’m doing OK – but not awesome. I gave myself a “-”.

In my mind this A- isn’t acceptable and now I know I’m going to write some in the books tonight. It’s not OK to go to sleep knowing I’m at an A-. It’s not what I’ve allowed myself to do. I’ve got to put that grade in my Google Calendar if I don’t make it right tonight. I don’t like to see any A- days in the calendar.

If you grade yourself for the day well before you are ready to quit, then you’re able to salvage the day and make it not just a good day, but an awesome day.

Strive for awesome days. Give yourself the motivation to have awesome days. Give yourself the kick in the ass to have awesome days. (Did I use ass yet in this post?) It’s a frustrating obsessive compulsive practice, this getting the ass in every post. Call it a character fault.

How’d you do today – what is your grade based on these two easy questions?

I could have said, “Write Your Fingers Numb”, “Write Your Butt Numb”, or something else less forceful, right? Would you be surprised to find out forceful works well most times?

Write what you know. Write how you know. Know what you know. Write like you know. And, like what you write.

If you are just now considering becoming a writer of books – whatever flavor, you have to write until your ass grows tired of sitting in a chair. Ideally you’ll be writing about things that might make a popular book topic – or one that tweaks your turtle.

If you just start writing books -that is the true ideal. Practice. You learn to write books by writing books. Get one or two under your belt and see whether you think you’ve got what it takes. Ask others if they think you’ve got what it takes.

I know people that think they can write a book that I think have deluded themselves. They’re not good book writers.

Am I going to tell them?

Nope. Is it possible they have a break-through and suddenly can write? Yes, it is possible, but of the 4 people I’m thinking about – a meteor hitting them in the thick of the skull is a much more likely occurrence.

There are book writers and there are… those that do everything else.

If you’re a book writer then start writing. It doesn’t matter whether you’re 15 years old or 55, just write. If you can’t force yourself to write exercises that will improve specific skills you’ll need to master, then forget it – just write. Write short stories about something you like. Challenge yourself to write the shortest story ever. Write a journal. Write comments at blogs you read and try to show you’re smart – or, try to piss everyone off.

A writer is a master of communicating something – some idea. The more you write, the more you’re going to understand how to use written words to spark neurons in a reader’s head, leading to reader enlightenment.

What ideas do you want to get across to the world?

Write! For god’s sakes write! Stop reading all these blog posts! lol…

A couple statements from Jim Blasingame of the SBA (Small Business Administration in the USA).

Small businesses make up more than 99.7% of all employers.

Home-based businesses account for 53 percent of all small businesses.

Writing books in a room in your house is a small business that many of you can do, are doing, or will do in the near future.

The year is 2010. A writer is someone that writes. Eventually the idea is to get paid for it, but, you can call yourself a writer well before you get paid for it. Just like a horse trainer that teaches her own horses tricks doesn’t get paid for it until she finds or creates a job for herself getting paid to teach horses tricks.

Van Gogh’s life was painting and yet for a long time he wasn’t paid for his work at all – he finally sold just one painting, the only one he ever sold. Would you call Van Gogh an artist?

This silly notion that you’re only a writer when you’ve sold something needs to be dismissed by anyone serious about the craft. My brother filled many notebooks with original songs, stories, and diary entries, and yet he wouldn’t consider himself a writer. He says he’s a software tester.

So, it’s not automatic… but, if you identify yourself as a writer – you can call yourself a writer to everyone you meet.

Writing books, ebooks, articles, or sales copy can be a small business you can start in your home – in a separate room and call yourself a writer. You can deduct the room for tax purposes if you don’t do anything else there (see IRS for specifics, it’s more involved than that). If you can’t write at home you can deduct hotel visits where you can write, uninterrupted with plenty of air conditioning and relative quiet.

The book world, like the newspaper world is changing dramatically. Paper-based books are going away and being replaced with something infinitely more flexible, more profitable, more instantaneous than waiting for half-a-year for your paperback book to be published with a printing press.

Ebook writers are a dime-a-dozen, but the cream of the crop will rise and make enough to live on.

If you love to write, and have something to say about a topic, or many topics, start writing now and producing ebooks as you go. The experience will help you figure out what topics you can write about successfully. It will teach you about editing. You’ll learn how to call on some force inside – determination – to help you finish each book you start. You’ll start interacting with other writers, authors, and those in the ebook publishing, audio publishing, and vook publishing world.

Start writing ebooks now as an education, preparing you for becoming part of the cream that is rising to the top.

If any of your books have Thailand as a subject, send them to www.ThailandeBooks.com to see if they’ll publish them digitally for you and sell them on their site.

If not, find another digital publisher that can help. I’ll write more about options for self-publishing, born-digital books in a future post. Stay tuned… there are many options to jump on while the jumping is good.

Advice to Writers recently had a post about Hemingway claiming to ‘try’ to throw away 90 pages of shit writing to 1 page of masterpiece. His shit:gold ratio is a claimed 90:1.

I was wondering what mine works out to. I think I must have something like 3:1 because in the course of rewrites and editing I must throw away 3 pages for every one decent. This includes not just whole pages or chapters, but all the words I trash in favor of better ones.

At 3:1 am I not critical enough of my writing? I figure when it goes through an editor there’s another 1 page thrown out per 1 that stays… so, maybe I’m at 4:1 after editing.

What is your shit:gold ratio – is it anything like 90:1?

Was Hemingway not just a brilliant writer, but a masterful bullshitter? I think I’d quit the profession after a 20 or 30:1 ratio! Was Hemingway like a monkey banging away on the typewriter keys? Can you imagine how much paper this guy wasted over the course of his lifetime? Holy shite…

Do you really think, while writing a 300 page book he threw away anywhere near the equivalent of 27,000 pages?

Come on now.

I’m calling BS.