People ask me, “How can I make myself start writing?” My own question has always been, “How can I make myself stop?”
I’ve spent more time worrying about my characters than I have about my children, but it’s my children, not my characters, who call every week to make sure I’m okay.
In my experience, every word this man says here is true. New writers and creators, the world is yours.
After a fashion.
Hmm, an internet success meme that almost makes sense. Unless, of course, you take it literally:
What Is the 10000 Hour Rule?
The 10000 Hour Rule is just that. This is the idea that it takes approximately 10000 hours of deliberate practice to master a skill.For instance, it would take 10 years of practicing 3 hours a day to become a master in your subject. It would take approximately 5 years of full-time employment to become proficient in your field. Simply work out how many hours you have already achieved and calculate how many more you need to clock up before you reach 10000. (As interpreted on Squidoo.)
You’ve heard/read this before and will hear/read it again, but did you know that this, the single most important thing you can keep in mind while writing anything, came from a guy who called himself “Q?”
His full name was Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, editor of, as Wikipedia puts it, “the monumental Oxford Book of English Verse…” among many other things, and if anyone ever knew a thing or two about brevity, Q was the one.
Or, as he put it so famously (and perfectly):
Ah, I love the smell of vindication in the morning!
Study: Online Video Viewers Start Leaving After Waiting Two Seconds – by David Murphy
One of the more frustrating things that can happen to your average Web surfer is the dreaded, “Why is my video not playing” error. Whether YouTube’s having a hiccup, your connection’s fizzling out, your browser’s taking a nap or some other perfect storm of problems is preventing you from watching two minutes of a cute kitty cat do its cute kitty cat thing, the end result is the same: No video.
You have a few choices when this happens. You can wait it out. You can hit refresh and hope that the problem goes away. Or, if you’re like most people, you can get hacked off and close the Web page.