In the Japanese superhero/comedy manga and anime One-Punch Man, the eponymous hero is so amazingly powerful it takes only one punch to defeat any opponent. No matter how colossal the foe: ONE PUNCH! (If you're wondering how they managed to stretch this conceit over 27 volumes and sell over

Get clear on what you're going to do. Then, commit to doing it. The rest takes care of itself. First, clarity: "How do I act so well?" Ian McKellen asks in an episode of Extras. "What I do is pretend to be the person I'm portraying in the film or

"I just read the greatest script I've ever read in my life," Steven Seagal informed a screenwriter (after arriving forty-five minutes late to their first meeting). "Really?" the writer replied, understandably aggravated after cooling his heels in Seagal's trailer while Seagal read. "Who wrote it?" "I did." As Thelonius Monk

People confuse the two audiences required for a perennial bestseller—or, really, any successful publication, regardless of your definition of success. This confusion makes the platform discussion more difficult. Let's clear it up. First audience: the people who want to buy your book on a certain topic before you've even

"When I was a teenager," writes Visakan Veerasamy, "I’d play bass in bands, sing horribly, and toy with the idea of being a songwriter. This is a letter I wish somebody had written to me when I was 17." Veerasamy's excellent "letter to a young songwriter" applies equally to

I brought an umbrella with me to Scotland. This seemed sensible at the time. I was packing for my semester abroad and Scotland was sort of rainy, wasn't it? It did, in fact, "rain" on one of my first nights in Glasgow, but this wasn't a New York rain. In

For Eminem, it's a 9-to-5 job. Assuming the recording work would begin in the evening—as it usually does in the music industry—the singer Akon arrived at the studio around six p.m. to begin his first collaboration session with Eminem. "Em just left," the studio guys told him.

"Move to Seattle," a friend suggested when I was looking for a change. "You know how there's a hot dog stand on every corner in Manhattan? In Seattle, they have coffee stands." So I left the Big Apple for the Emerald City. Looking back, I think I went assuming that

Who am I to sit here dispensing advice on managing writing output? As my next manuscript deadline hurtles toward me like a big, um, hurtler, all these carefully cultivated creative habits wilt. The gears begin to grind. The machinery starts to smoke. I reconsider my path in life. As the