I wrote five novels while in grad school, and another million words of genre fanfics that I published to a gaming Web site, before I self-published my first novel. All that in addition to my dissertation and a few years working as an editor, which I think really helped me iron out the mechanics of my writing. I go back every now and then to my early novels to see if anything there is salvageable, but each time I come to the same conclusion as Mr. Banks.
