The secret of prolific and best-selling authors

Here's a concept most people might not have thought about: No human being, not even Ernest Hemingway or Victor Hugo, has ever written a book.

All authors, no matter how inspired they are or talented, started with ONE sentence. Indeed, writers write sentences. They don't write "books."

Over time (and a lot of black coffee and white nights), those sentences are made to work and stick together into paragraphs. Next, the paragraphs are made to work together and become chapters. Finally, the chapters are put together and, voila, the intellectually exhausted author now has a book.

Of course, this is not the end of the story since the book will probably be rejected (politely, one hopes) by a few hundred publishers before a crazy publisher decides to take the risk.

And it goes without saying that not all authors become billionaires like J.K. Rowling.

But my point is that a book can only be written one sentence at a time.

This is something that the late prolific writer Isaac Asimov has thoroughly understood and even mastered. In his lifetime, he wrote about 300 books (both fiction and non-fiction).

His secret was that he used a typewriter (not a word processor or PC). This drove him to write and write and write. He would only edit at the very end. In fact, he mentioned that he wrote as simply and as clearly as he spoke. This is why his prose is so clear.

My point is that no matter what you plan to do, the first step is probably 50% of the effort overall.

And the mysterious thing is that once you start a project -- one that you are truly excited about -- all kinds of coincidences and resources and encounters enter your life to help you along the way.

But you must NOT stop. Once you do stop, it's over. The momentum is dead. Your project will fail.

Entrepreneurs will often face obstacles, but they must not stop. One way to make sure you do not stop, is to pay someone to monitor your output. For instance, you can give a friend $500 and tell her that you commit to producing a certain document every Monday for the next 10 weeks, and email it to her. It could be 5 pages of your 50-page business plan, or a plan, or a procedure, etc.

If you miss your deadline one Monday, then your friend gets to keep $50. This will be easy money for your friend! And it will be "punishment" for you for not keeping your commitment.

This may sound like a strange ploy, but trust me, it works. If a person is not willing to put out $500 to stay on course for the next 10 weeks, he/she simple is not serious about a project or startup. Whether you decide to go with this ploy or not, it will give you an idea of how committed you are, as well as how confident you are in your own self-discipline.

Without self-discipline, one cannot succeed.