Daily Inspiration Quote by Jerry Pournelle

A million words is both a dare and a mercy: a way of telling would-be writers that the real gatekeeper isn’t inspiration, it’s attrition. Pournelle’s line lands because it drags the romantic myth of effortless talent into the fluorescent light of labor. He’s not praising verbosity; he’s pricing admission. The number is hyperbole with a purpose: to make the slog feel finite and, therefore, survivable.

The blunt clause "you're going to throw away" is the quote’s spine. It treats waste as the mechanism of growth, not its unfortunate byproduct. Subtext: your early pages aren’t evidence that you lack the gift; they’re the compost pile that produces a voice. It also inoculates against perfectionism, that genteel form of procrastination where nothing gets finished because everything must be brilliant. Pournelle’s intent is to shift the writer’s self-image from "someone who produces gems" to "someone who iterates", which is psychologically stabilizing and professionally accurate.

Context matters. Pournelle came up through journalism and later worked in high-output genres where deadlines and reader expectations punish preciousness. In that world, writing is a craft measured in reps. The quote also carries a quiet warning about apprenticeship: you can’t game the system with tips, tools, or branding. You have to pay in drafts, in discarded leads, in failed scenes, until the muscle memory kicks in and the waste gets smarter.