Stephen King on Startups

Right now I’m in the middle of famous horror writer Stephen King’s memoir On Writing. He tells a funny and entertaining background of his life followed by thoughts on how to be a good writer. When asked the question “what does it take to be a great writer” he offers up the following advice:

• Be a voracious reader and writer (he believes reading other books is incredibly important)
• Specifically, he recommends reading and writing four to six hours each day
• For the writing, he suggests writing 2,000 words per day, which is about 10 pages (he says to start with 1,000 words per day and then work up to 2,000)

He’s blunt when it comes to those who balk at the time commitment: if you can’t do it, you won’t be successful.

How does this pertain to startups? Easy, startups take a serious time commitment to be successful – both studying other best practices (reading) and devoting time to JFDI (writing).