Brandon Sanderson worked the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift at a hotel. Management had two requirements: stay awake and be there if somebody needed the front desk.

Otherwise, he could write.

He spent about five years writing novels in those early-morning hours.

He wrote White Sand Prime.

Then Star's End.

Then Lord Mastrell.

Then Knight Life.

Then The Sixth Incarnation of Pandora.

Then Elantris. (This one is going to matter.)

Then Dragonsteel.

Then he rewrote White Sand.

Then Mythwalker.

Then Mistborn Prime.

Then Aether of Night.

Then Final Empire Prime.

Then The Way of Kings Prime.

That is thirteen novels.

Thirteen book-length attempts to teach himself how to write one somebody in New York would buy.

None had sold.

Then, in 2003, an editor left Sanderson a voicemail about Elantris. The sixth book. (Told you it was going to matter.)

Sanderson had submitted it 18 months earlier, and a lot had changed. He’d moved since then, stopped using his AOL email address, and changed phone numbers. The editor had to Google him and find a current number on his BYU graduate-student page.

By Sanderson's own account, he had filed the manuscript under one of two possibilities:

But the editor had finally opened it the night before, read a few hundred pages, and wanted to know if it was still available.

Most people tell this as a story of perseverance: Keep writing. Don’t quit. Your breakthrough may be one voicemail away.

Fine, fine, fine…

My favorite part came later.

Those rejected novels became Sanderson’s raw material. He Frankensteined their characters, plots, magic mechanics, and settings into the fictional universe now known as the Cosmere.

Sanderson calls the first books practice. I’m sure some were bad (maybe even really bad if that’s possible for a Sanderson book).

The bad books still carried usable parts.

He quit Mythwalker about 600 pages in. It’s a side story about two cousins named Siri and Vivenna who would not leave him alone, so he pulled them out and eventually gave them their own book: Warbreaker.

He called Final Empire Prime the worst book he had written. It still contained an early version of Feruchemy. Mistborn Prime had a preliminary version of Allomancy and pieces of the setting, even though Sanderson thought the plot was dull and the main character did not work.

He later looked at those two disappointments, took the parts with voltage, added new ideas, and built the Mistborn trilogy.

He moved chunks of Dragonsteel into the published Way of Kings. Hoid and Adonalsium were already tucked away in the older work. White Sand went through multiple lives before becoming the graphic novel readers know now.

The Cosmere came out of the scraps bin.

My boys own Lego kits.

The outside of the box tells you exactly what the finished thing will look like. Put these 1,257 pieces together in this order, give up four hours of your Saturday, and you will receive the promised spaceship.

Most of us walk into a creative project hoping it will behave like that.

The business will become the picture on the box. The podcast will find its audience. The book will make it to print. The newsletter will grow into the thing we pictured when we bought the domain.

My boys also have a giant plastic tub filled with loose Lego.

Every color. Every set. Wheels without cars. Tiny swords without tiny people. A dragon wing, half a staircase, six translucent orange pieces, and many, many, many more loose bricks.

The tub looks more like a creative life.

You build something, and when it breaks, you keep the interesting pieces. Some become recognizable later. Some stay loose forever.

Sanderson’s scrap pile had a pattern.

He kept the people he could not stop thinking about. He kept magic systems that created interesting choices and pieces of a world with questions still tucked inside.

After Jesus fed the crowd in John 6, he told the disciples to gather the leftovers so nothing would be wasted.

Gather the fragments.

That’s a pretty good instruction for a dead project.

Feruchemy was easy to spot. Your best leftover may live inside a lesson you learned the hard way.

Strip away the project nouns

Psychologists call this analogical transfer: recognizing the shape of an old problem inside a new one.

Start with the project in front of you. Write the problem in one sentence. Then cross out the name of every tool, platform, person, or project.

What’s left?

A stalled book turns into: Too many ideas are competing for the same space.

An unclear launch becomes: People cannot repeat the promise.

Once you can name the structure, ask: Where have I dealt with this before, and what did it teach me?

Finish one sentence: [Old project] taught me ________. So in [current project], I am changing ________.

Final Empire Prime stayed unpublished. Feruchemy found a new home inside Mistborn.

Your abandoned project may have one good piece left in it. Name it. Give it somewhere new to live.

🗂️ Go deeper: Sanderson’s history as a writer is unusually honest about which books were bad, which pieces survived, and the year he thought he was getting worse.

Bottom Line: Build from the tub.

Until next time,

—Payton ✌️