Writing tip: The belief that the 1st draft must be good makes working on it an intimidating prospect that often leads to paralysis. So let the 1st draft be junk; it should be purely about getting from start to finish, nothing more. You really write the piece when you rewrite it.

Robert Pirsig’s book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was rejected by 121 publishers. How do you keep going after “just” 100 rejections? After 20, even?

Then it was published by William Morrow & Company in 1974 and stayed on best-seller lists for decades, with total sales of over 5 million copies. For comparison, Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and... See more