It all started with an early evening trip on the tube.

I was bleary-eyed from a long day and the overhead lights seemed a touch brighter than usual.

My temples were slowly starting to pulsate, hinting at the headache that was to come.

Suddenly my attention was snapped away from feeling sorry for myself…

… there was something of interest on the seat next to me.

And no, it wasn’t a copy of the Metro, City AM or the Evening Standard.

It was a battered, creased and yellowed copy of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

After a quick check to see if it belonged to anyone I snapped it up and read the first page.

Fast forward a couple days and I’m three quarters of the way through.

Even though it was written many moons ago it still grabbed me and kept me up until the wee hours reading… as I’m sure it has done for many readers well before my time.

You could stop almost anyone in the street and ask them about Dracula. I bet they could roughly recite the plot.

But what they maybe couldn’t tell you is what actually happens, and how it unfolds.

Told in snippets of journal entries, diary entries and newspaper extracts it’s a truly gripping tale.

That’s why it’s a classic.

And that’s also why, over 100 years later in a world of much shorter attention spans, it still holds up.

When you set down to write do you think of it as a future classic or do you just set down to write without a thought of a glorious future?

If you’re interested in what makes a classic piece of work a classic piece of work, this book by Ryan Holiday is a decent read.