In the first years of King’s writing career, he pitched.

And pitched.

The result was a lot of rejection slips.

And on one of the rejection slips was a brief note, his writing had potential, but it was too fluffy, and then included a short formula “2nd Draft = 1st Draft -10%”.

This formula is something he lives by to this day, as noted in his book “On Writing”.

The application extends beyond novels to emails, slacks, and blog posts.