As an aspiring novelist, the image below is a great source of inspiration.

This is a photograph of George Orwell’s original manuscript pages for 1984. Now, I regard 1984 as one of the finest pieces of literature of the last century. It is well written, exciting and deep and dark and prophetic. But look at those pages. They are riddled with markings and notes and deletions.

The thing is, no one gets it right the first time. Not even George Orwell. The reason this is such an inspiration is that I now feel better about the project I’m working on now. It’s not perfect (not even close) but with a lot of work and revision, I’ll get there.

Looks like it took Orwell a few tries as well.