skimping on prep

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

no pain, all gain

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

stating the obvious

"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

the notes you don't play

"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

just do it

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'

a head full of ideas

“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'

things that have to go in

Recently, I went to the New-York Historical Society—don't ask me about that hyphen, I have no idea—to peruse an exhibit of Robert Caro artifacts. Caro, author of The Power Broker and four volumes (so far) of the definitive Lyndon Johnson biography, bequeathed his archives to the

writing your own material

Recently, we lost Ray Liotta. Elizabeth Banks directed Liotta in what turned out to be one of his last films, Cocaine Bear. Banks decided to cast him after working with him on another film as an actress and seeing Liotta's approach to performing a scene. After he delivered

treat yourself

"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret," advises Special Agent Dale Cooper in an episode of Twin Peaks. "Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it. Don't wait for it. Just let it

keep rolling

Maybe it was all that time spent as an editor, but even after seven years as a full-time writer, I still need reminding that writing—the actual writing of new words, one new word after the other—is its own thing. Starkly, fundamentally different in every way from everything else