I've read a number of books recently which have not been well written. This is disappointing for so many reasons.
Yet in acknowledging the inadequacies of a work, I am reminded of one factor with which I cannot pick fault: at least the author produced a sufficient number of words with a coherent enough theme to create a book. This is more than I have done.
A couple of years ago I realised that the reason I didn't start writing my masterpiece was that if I didn't start, I wouldn't fail. But of course, this isn't true. American author Seth Godin wrote in his blog recently: 'If you don't start, you will fail. Not starting and failing lead to precisely the same outcome, with different names.'