Motivating writers to start writing a book because " You can't edit a blank page"

“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on” -Louis
L’Amour

This adage is what motivates me to sit down and start penning my ideas and I believe the feeling is same for those of us wanting to write a book or two or also for those who might have tried writing one at some point of time. For the above lot, anytime there’s an amusing story or an interesting experience writing about it appears the next logical step.“Make it a point to write a few words every day, keep at it consistently and voila by the end of a few months or a year or so, you have your draft ready”. How many times have you heard that? How many times have you even tried to follow it? Should not this be easy enough? But actual writing, instead of a quick race turns out to be as difficult as completing a very lengthy marathon. A budding writer faces several struggles and it’s how he/she
copes up with those struggles that determines whether the intended book gets completed successfully or not.

My challenge revolves around this struggling road of a writer.The writer may end up in a confirmation bias by pondering upon their unsuccessful attempts. Even before the writer ponders over his/her unsuccessful attempts, the very fact that ‘would the idea even be able to strike a chord’ is what bugs a budding writer. Also the difficulty associated, post completion of the draft, with the publication is another hindrance a budding writer often faces. I consider the problem of gauging the strength of the idea and the troubles associated with publication as the elephant problems and I have decided to adopt a bright spot approach for the resolution of the same.

A famous quote goes “Every problem has in it the seed of its own solution”. My solution I
believe will provide that seed of the solution to this common problem, or rather fear, of ‘failing’ through either the idea or the handling of its publication.


Solution:

A 2-sided platform will be built that provides the network, methodology, platform, and expert support for the innovative potential of this connected world to be fully realized. This two-way platform aims at providing visibility for the writers and connectivity opportunities for both the writers and the publishers .This website would entail a few snippets of the writer’s articles/plots/ideas and along with it some renowned publishers will be on boarded in the platform who are interested in finding new talent for publication. All the snippets will belong to the writer and be copyright protected so that the chances of theft are minimized.

Apart from this there will be a feed-back mechanism where the writers will be provided feedback/suggestions by their fellow writers and by the publishers. This will give a real time check/validity of the plots/ideas and the writers will be left less sceptical about the ideas.On the other hand the onboarded publishers can use this opportunity to find the talent in accordance to their own need. This will provide the opportunity to those writers who face cognitive block just by thinking that their book will not be published, and their ideas are not good enough. This will help them in finding a champion for their ideas to be taken forward to the audience.

The storyboard will help in understanding how effective the solution will be:

The above solution focuses on the need assumption of this idea. Secondly in the “technical”category the assumption goes that can we put together whatever we have and create a solution. The website making is feasible and all the participants including the writer and the publishers can be onboarded for the collaboration. This platform in future can provide an entire ecosystem for writers and publishers provided the fulfilment of the assumption that it can be taken to the field from a prototype. Finally, the profit will be collected from the relevant ads in the websites and royalty from the publishers once a book gets published from this platform. Along with this in future several e-commerce sites selling books can become a part of this ecosystem and this collaboration can help in gaining the profit.

The looks-like prototype of the websites are given in few snippets.

Fig 1:The home page of the platform having the snippets of the writers which will be copyright of the writer.

Fig 2: The page having the entire idea of the writer,also it will have a contact button and comments section for the feedback.The contact button can be used to connect to the writer.

Fig 3: The page displays the details about the publishers on platform.

1-day experiment

For conducting this 1 day experiment I will take a leap of faith assumption that the publishers will be interested in joining the platform and collaborating with the writers.Considering the cost impact matrix, I will approach the LitSoc, the literature society of students of IIMB with the wireframe of my idea/solution and they will be encouraged to post their writeups/ideas in the website as a part of the experiment.

This experiment will cost a merge amount since the wireframe of the website will be built by me leveraging my own capability of being a software engineer and on the other hand collaborators being the students of IIMB will not be charging for being a part of this experiment.

Whether the idea of the solution is feasible and whether the writers are ready to share their ideas in an open platform and obviously the main hypothesis that I will be testing through this whether the idea “Your book will not be published” is one of the prime problems that plagues the mind
of an author.

The success of this experiment will be gauged from willingness of the writers to share their ideas. Along with this it will be considered successful even if few writers become ready to share their ideas on the platform on the day of experiment.This will show how impactful the experiment was