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Mental discipline.

How to keep your brain on one thing long enough to get a thing done. I imagine this is what ADD is like. I sit down to do something: read, write, compose an email, update the Uptown Express website, etc. And my brain pounces, suggesting a hundred other things that need to be done: groceries,... Continue Reading →

Willpower as a limited resource.

Recently, I heard about an astonishing study. Two groups of individuals were placed in a room with a bowl of radishes and a bowl of cookies. Each group was then given a puzzle to work on. The puzzle was impossible to solve, though none of them were told that. One group was allowed to eat... Continue Reading →

Ideas are cheap.

I heard it said on a podcast recently, the award-winning I Should Be Writing, with the knowledgeable and easy-to-listen-to Mur Lafferty. Ideas are cheap. Anyone can have them, and practically everyone does. The key is execution. Most people spend their lives saying “someday.” A few try, fail, and never try again. Others give up too... Continue Reading →

Deep in the heart of revisions.

Writing this book took me ten years. Longer, really, but the actual writing of it started in 2000, when I had some “time off from work” (read: between jobs) and spent virtually every afternoon at Mozart’s, a gorgeous coffee house on the shore of Lake Austin in Austin, TX. It’s hard not to be inspired... Continue Reading →

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