Dear readers,
Yesterday I shared one of my favourite quotes on X-Twitter.
"If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor."
Wise words from Edgar Rice Burroughs
— #James Carran (#@getpaidwrite)
1:51 PM • Aug 12, 2025
Burroughs, of course, took his own advice.
He wrote something in the region of 80+ novels, numerous short stories, and created characters like John Carter of Mars and Tarzan. A trailblazer and a pioneer, he was also a criminally underrated author with some serious writing chops.
But all that is by the by for this issue of the Write Way where I want to drill down on that quote to
Play the odds!
Indulge me in an analogy for a moment.
You hear of a lottery with a $41M jackpot but the catch is you can’t buy tickets…
…instead you can print them yourself…
…for free.
How many tickets are you printing?
One?
One thousand?
Or “as many as I can before the draw”?
It’s a no-brainer, and yet…
…writers never seem to realise this is literally the situation you’re in.
Far too many writers are sitting there with their single lottery ticket in one hand and a large glass of scotch in the other, awaiting their inevitable rejection, hoping for an incredible reaction.
They write one book.
They send one email to their list.
They create one product.
And then when it goes nowhere, half of them give up and the other half reluctantly return to the drawing board and start again, creating one new thing to try.
This is a ridiculous way to operate.
You ought to be printing those tickets as fast as you can, constantly entering again and again until you either
…win or you die!
Most of you know my very first children’s book was accepted and published, unlike most authors who’re on their tenth or twelfth rejection by the time they get a book deal.
(Woo, I won the lottery!)
But what you might not know is that when I submitted the book I submitted three different manuscripts, covering three completely different ideas. They were only interested in one!
Last time I submitted a children’s book manuscript, I submitted it to four different publishers and even that was a bit tame, I should have submitted it to ten.
Yes, writing is a skill game.
But it's also in many cases a luck game. A lottery.
But a lottery where you can print your own tickets.
What most writers do, if they ever actually finish a project is they send it out into the world and then they wait, constantly hitting the refresh button to see what’s happening
Did anyone like my tweet now?
How about now?
How about now?
Has anyone bought that product I linked yet?
How about now?
How about now?
Did that email get replies yet?
How about now?
How about now?
Did anyone review my book today?
How about now?
How about now?
Did that publisher see my proposal yet?
How about now?
How about now?
Believe me, I’ve been there. But if you constantly hit the refresh button…
…you'll sap all your energy for further action. You'll end up so focused on possible results that you'll lose all momentum for the future.
And that will kill your writing career stone dead.
Instead you keep on taking shots, keep on printing tickets.
Look at Brandon Sanderson, the fantasy author. One of his latest Secret Project books, Isles of the Emberdark, arrived on my doorstep yesterday.
(It’s gorgeous.)
I was feeling jealous that he could create such stunning books and generate massive revenues doing it, raking in some $41M in a single Kickstarter, and doing it more than once too.
But although his results (and his book designs) are sexy, his path to get there is anything but that. Yes, Sando won the writing lottery, but he won it by just…
…printing all the tickets!
The man has written some thirty plus novels (not short ones), created multiple podcasts, reams of content, delivered writing lectures and more. He built his success, one ticket at a time. Yes, he got lucky breaks, but only because he was always putting himself out there and building a body of work.
He just kept creating until critical mass built up.
In the words we opened with, he wrote a hundred stories until the odds were in his favour.
There's a passage in my favourite book of the Bible which speaks to this perfectly:
Cast your bread upon the waters,
for you will find it after many days.
Give a portion to seven, or even to eight,
for you know not what disaster may happen on earth.
If the clouds are full of rain,
they empty themselves on the earth,
and if a tree falls to the south or to the north,
in the place where the tree falls, there it will lie.
He who observes the wind will not sow,
and he who regards the clouds will not reap.
As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything.
In the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good.
There is great wisdom there, which is why I used it in Sacred Statements, my limited edition birthday course that I know many of you picked up while it was on sale a few months ago.
(If you didn’t, alas, I keep my promises and the doors are closed on that. It’ll never be for sale to the general public ever again.)
Too many people are held back from publishing for fear of whether it'll go well or not. They're the people observing the wind and not sowing. They're watching the clouds and not reaping.
But even more people publish once, and then start worrying about how it's going.
They want immediate results. To hurry things along.
And all it does is stop them from sowing again.
And again.
And again.
That's what building a writing career is all about, in any form.
You sow, and you wait. You sow more, and you wait more. You sow more, and you wait more.
And as you keep sowing, whether that's sending emails, publishing books, writing proposals, whatever it is, you keep waiting.
At some point all that bread you sent out will come back.
Maybe you luck out and it comes back big.
Often you strike out and it comes back small.
But if you sit and wait?
You miss months of sowing while you waited, hitting that cursed refresh button and killing your career.
Yes, writing success is a game of luck in the near term.
The success of this here newsletter issue is largely luck. Maybe it pops off and y'all share it with friends to earn referral rewards. Maybe it doesn't.
The success of a book is largely luck. Maybe it hits the lists, maybe it goes "big on booktok". Maybe it doesn't.
The success of a tweet is largely luck. Maybe Elon Musk replies. Maybe a big account retweets. Maybe a deranged eejit gets mad and a horde of crazies start commenting. Maybe it dies on the vine instead.
But you can tell the people who are relying on luck for a quick win because they quit when it doesn't work. (They also quit when it goes really well, but that’s another story for another time.)
Meanwhile, the craftsmen?
They're taking it post by post, email by email, book by book. They're not relying on luck. They're relying on building their skills with everything they write. Getting a little bit better. Developing a more distinct voice. Learning to edit more effectively. Writing faster and more efficiently.
Putting in the reps.
Learning the craft.
Increasing their odds with every book, every post, every email.
So in the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good.
Play the odds!
And may your pipe get better with every pipeful and your prose improve with every penstroke,
Yours,
James Carran, Craftsman Writer
fin
P.s. I finally (two years later) got to creating some rewards for the Write Way referral program. So if you want to share, you’ll get a mix of over the shoulder videos, exclusive trainings, old videos that I don’t sell any more and free courses…
More on that in The Weekender but I figured I might as well just start dropping it in here.
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