The more I date an author, the more I realize how similar are founding a startup and writing a piece of fiction:

1. You have a wild idea of how to change the world.
2. Despite it being wild, many people had tried something similar before, unsuccessfully.
3. Before you succeed, your parents think you don’t have a real job.
4. After you succeed, everyone tells you they believed in you all along.
5. Sometimes, success is a well-timed piece of crap, and failure is just a poorly-timed perfect piece of work.
6. It takes years (more than you think) to get the job done.
7. You need a great team to walk this path.
8. The hardest part is to balance the long-term success with the short-term gains.
9. “If you do not write your book the result is simple: you are cursed to see fragments of it everywhere, piecemeal, for the rest of your life”