First Word

It's one thing to want to do something, it's another thing to actually do it. They can teach theory in the classroom, but until you've dug deep, gotten your hands sublimely dirty, and really entrenched yourself in the experience, you can't learn the most important lessons and realities. So, to help anyone else (and these are life lessons) here are some general tips. Do not beat yourself up if you're an editor and there's a mistake or even two . All those meticulous copy editors out there who are single minded about not making one mistake in a 50,000 to 75,000 or 100,000 word book have truly put too much pressure on themselves into a never-good-enough reality. If I have learned nothing else in editing ... there is going to be a mistake ... somewhere. It requires minimally two sets or preferably three sets of eyes to clean up a manuscript. If you're sense of "perfection" (which there is no such thing) is about the erroneous belief you will see ever...

I used to work with a guy who said that every time we were on deadline for the magazine. I thought it was funny and pretty true. Stress is something we perceive. It's how we manage that perception that can either feel stressful or not. Think about it. Unless someone really is firing a gun at you maybe life isn't as stressful and you "feel" it is. I always liked what the book The Secret said about time: there is always enough time. I was thinking about stress because I was running late for a meeting yesterday. The phrase, there is always enough time soothed me in that moment. The "stress" melted away. Perception! I perceived it stressful because I was running late. But when I put a different message through my mind, the stress alleviated itself. My point is most stress is about perception and what we put on ourselves. Our self-talk is directly related to our stress levels. I'll give you another example. For some unexplainable reason I put a lot of p...