No serious pitcher plays with a brand-new glove. You've got to break it in first. Stretch a couple of heavy-duty rubber bands around it, or sleep with it under your mattress—the methods vary, but the principle remains the same. You break a glove in a little if you want

When crafting advice for others, remember your Paracelsus: dosis sola facit venenum. Latin a little rusty? "Only the dose makes the poison." It isn't enough to tell us what might help. As an expert, the least you can do is tell us the least we can do. Don't tell me

Making my way through the sprawling Wheel of Time series (WoT) as a young aspiring writer, I often wondered how author Robert Jordan did it on a technical level: How could one person keep so much information straight across one enormous book after another while telling an epic story? As

Recipes list prep time for a reason. There's nothing worse than getting four pans bubbling on the stove only to realize you needed a chopped onion thirty seconds ago. Fresh out of college, I made videos with friends and shared them at parties. This was pre-YouTube, so the only goal

They'll tell you not to compare your insides to other people's outsides. You won't listen. As a writer, it's hard not to envy Brandon Sanderson, the prolific and successful fantasy novelist. Forget the $41.7 million Kickstarter campaign and all the best-sellers that preceded it. I'm jealous of his ability

"What were they wearing?" "Something...brown. Maybe?" My wife notices clothing. I don't. When I try to remember a situation, the clothing data just isn't there. It's hazy, like trying to read a book in a dream. Shirts? Pants? A coat? Sure, why not. If I have to visualize specific

"The Old Man and the Sea could have been over a thousand pages long and had every character in the village in it and all the processes of how they made their living, were born, educated, bore children, et cetera," Ernest Hemingway told The Paris Review. "That is done excellently

In 1986, I watched William Shatner host Saturday Night Live. Great host, great episode: You had the Enterprise refitted as a theme restaurant and Shatner exhorting Star Trek fans at a convention to get a life, among other excellent sketches from one of the best casts in the show's history.

“You know what your job is?” one director asked a young Tom Hanks after the actor showed up unprepared to rehearsal. “You have got to show up on time, you have to know the text, and you have to have a head full of ideas.” In short, ideas aren't extra.