Dear Writer,

Writing is the easiest thing in the world. Anyone can do it. It's like hitting a tennis ball against a wall. It's like swimming. Anyone can learn. You don't have to be the best. You don't need to compete in anything. On the other hand, you may aspire to be a celebrated star.

Like swimming, like playing tennis, there are people writing at all levels. If you just want to amuse yourself writing the weekends, just keep on keeping on. If you want to bash out a novel, you need no more advice than to keep on keeping on.

 

But if you dream of making something original and beautiful and true, if you imagine seeing your book reviewed, or in the window of a book store, you're in the same position as the ambitious swimmer—you've got a lot of training to do, a lot of muscles to build, a lot of habits to start establishing right now, today.

 

If you know what these good writing habits are, there's nothing more I can give you. Perhaps you know what I'm going to tell you—you have to write regularly, every day. You have to treat this as the single most important part of your life. You do not need anything as fancy as inspiration, just this steady habit of writing regularly even when you're sick or sad or dull. Nothing must stop you, not even your beloved children. If you have kids you do what Toni Morrison did—write in the hours before they wake. If you wish to be a like the champion who swims for four hours every day of the year, you will need extraordinary will. You either have this or you don't, but you won't know unless you try .

 

Let's say you (quietly, secretly) want to be a genius. Then you must teach yourself to be self-critical. Trust me—your own uncertain opinions are worth one hundred times more than the judgments of your friends. Your friends love you and are may be very smart. But they cannot imagine what you have not yet imagined. So don't show them stuff you fear may not be right.

 

If you feel at all unhappy with your work, there is a good reason for it. Trust your judgment. Write the draft again, and again. This is the strength you must build—to work alone, in solitude, and write and rewrite and rewrite. Even when you finally succeed in making the original work you wished, you will still live with doubt and uncertainty. All writers learn to live with this. In this way you and I feel exactly the same about our work today.

 

If you ever read one of my books I hope you'll think it looks so easy. In fact, I wrote those chapters 20 times over, and over, and over, and that if you want to write at a good level, you'll have to do that too.

 

That is the first half of the good habits you must develop.

 

Here's the second half.

 

First, turn off your television. The television is your enemy. It will stop you doing what you wish to do. If you wish to watch TV, you do not want to be a serious writer, which is fine.

But if you do pull that plug you've just created time for that exercise which is going to build up your writing muscles like nothing else. It's called reading. Perhaps you are already reading good books for several hours a day, in which case you don't need me to preach at you. Forgive me. I only mention this because I have met an extraordinary number of beginners who don't think they need to read anything too much.

 

I don't doubt these people enjoy their writing, and perhaps they will even get to publish something. But you can not play the top game without reading every day. There are so many extraordinary books waiting for you, some writing by living writers, the majority by those a long time dead. This is not because writers used to be better than they are now, but because a lot of generations have come before us and we would be crazy not to know what miracles they achieved.

 

Some of the great books are about people with lives just like you. Some will have characters you can 'identify' with, but some of the very greatest will tell stories you could never have imagined, were written in languages you cannot speak, and tell the stories of people like none we have ever known.

 

Now you've killed the TV, you should invest in a very good dictionary.

 

I know it is a major drag to stop reading and look up a word in a dictionary, but it is less of a drag than continuing to read not knowing what the story really means. No-one wants to do it. I never want to do it, but it is always worth the trouble. In my own case I often write the new word down, not because I am stupid, but because it helps me remember it.

 

So what books should you read if your greatest aim is to lift your game?

 

Clearly "Goose Bumps" is not going to help you in your ambitions, but where to start, where to continue the adventure you're already on?

 

I'd suggest a wonderful new book by Francine Prose, "Reading Like a Writer."

 

Go buy this now. You may already be a disciplined, talented original writer but you will not be sorry to read this for two hours tomorrow.

 

-Peter Carey

 You can learn more about Peter Carey's writing at his website.

 

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Dear Writer,

We're closing in on the final lap of NaNoWriMo. Just one weekend left! From my perusal of the NaNoWriMo forums, it looks like we've now split into three groups.

Group One: The Superheroes. You put in your 1667 per day, and your word-count graph has grown tall and mighty like a redwood forest. You're currently sprinting through the 40,000s, and you'll win handily. You're the NaNoWriMo equivalent of an ultra-marathonner, and your discipline puts you in the top 3% of Wrimos everywhere. 

Group Two: The Come-Back Kids. You are part of the vast middle. You're still bushwhacking through the 20,000s or making the trek through the 30,000s. It's going to take some work, and you'll probably validate your novel at the very last minute, but victory is still in sight. Update your time zone (under user settings) so the Validator is there when you need it, and keep on trucking. 

Group Three: The Go On Without Me's. For you, November turned out to be a very bad month to try and write a novel. Life went completely crazycakes, and you faced a never-ending series of demanding work or school projects, health emergencies, social obligations, and/or tech meltdowns. You managed to get a few good ideas down on paper, but never quite found your novel's rhythm. You're thinking of bowing out, and planning on giving it a try next year.  

If you're a Superhero, I offer you the highest of high-fives. The word-count Validator is now live under Edit Novel Info, and it's eager for you to come paste a scrambled version of your 50,000-word (or longer!) manuscript into its maw and hit the Submit button. Your purple winner bar, winner's certificate, and other goodies await.  

To the Come-Back-Kids: I am so with you. I somehow fall 10,000 words behind pace every year. I also win every year, and you can too. Easy-peasy. Our path to victory lies in huge word-count days. The sooner you knock out your first 5,000-word day, the happier you and your book will be. Don't wait until the last minute! To help get some momentum, allow yourself to write the juiciest, word-filled climactic scenes still to come in your book, even if it requires some skipping ahead. Start writing as soon as you finish this email.   

For the Go On Without Me's: This is going to sound really weird, but you're in the best shape of all three groups. You're off the map, but that's the point of this escapade. NaNoWriMo is to there to put you in such an impossible situation that you can stop worrying about perfection and achievement and just savor the thrill that comes with making and doing. Think of the remaining days in NaNoWriMo as an anything-goes creative retreat. You sacrificed your novel to the world around you this month, and the world around you appreciated it. But you now get some time for you. You may not write 50,000 words, but you still have plenty of time to create something smaller and equally wonderful. Return to the page—there's still a beautiful adventure waiting for you.

To everyone: Have a great final lap of NaNoWriMo. Write like the wind! We're almost home.

Warm noveling regards,

Chris
30,001 words
 

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WIRED Magazine posted an interesting article on an interesting company with the mantra of 'Go Big'. Demand Media seems to be achiving this goal with the 4000 articles and videos they publish daily soon they will be within the top15 American online companies just next to Amazon. Read the article here. Here is a slideshow:

And an interesting video

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A true gem via Guy Kawasaki. If you are one of those slave like designers, just put it on your background image and gather to courage to get away.

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Dear writer,

As I write this less than twenty-four hours before NaNoWriMo’s deadline for this pep talk, I also have a book due in eight days. Not just due. Absolute, final, already overdue, my-editor-is-a-patient-woman-but-publishing-schedules-are-publishing-schedules, due.

When NaNoWriMo contacted me last April about writing a pep talk for this year's masochi—er—enthusiastic writers, I had just decided to whack PEGASUS in half and make two books out of it. I have always been a write-each-draft-straight-through-and-don’t-look-back storyteller; it’s the way I develop a feel for the pacing, for where the high and low, careening and meditative, places of each story are—and how I discover where and how it's going to end. Consistency and clarity (and spelling) begin to emerge in the second draft;  there are a lot of complete re-rewrites and outtakes during the second draft, and probably the most-per-page screams of frustration: the first draft has told me that the story is there but now I have to make it work on the page. The third draft should mainly be giving the story a really good brushing and plaiting its mane and tail—but there are hazards even here (ask anyone who has ever plaited a mane or a tail), nor is it likely to stand quietly for this operation.  

Some time last winter, still on the first draft and beginning to panic, I... stopped. I did not write straight through to the end. I went back to the beginning and started on the second draft as if I knew what I was doing—as if I knew how it ended. I seriously don't know how PEGASUS ends. I won't know till I get there. And I didn't finish the first draft, so I didn't get there. I've never started a second draft without having finished a first draft—without knowing how it's going to end.  I've never split a book into two books...
Writing is like this. 

Oh, not exactly like this; every writer is different as every human being is different, one from another. (Some writers make their deadlines. Some writers know where they're going. Some writers don't mind not knowing where they're going.) But the chief thing I would like to get over to you, as you look to me to say something inspiring about this maniac—I mean, this energizing and felicitious project to write a first draft of a novel in a month, is the liveness of Story, and therefore the unpredictability inherent in writing any story down. 

You need that live, tensile, surprising strength between you and the story you're trying to write, or it'll die on the page. But this doesn't make it easier. It makes it harder. It's more exciting—more thrilling, more appalling: on good days you'll fly higher than a peregrine cruising for dinner, on bad days someone will have to scrape you off the floor with a spatula. This is what writing is like. You have to write on through the highs and lows, the careens and the meditations of your stories. And that's what you're here for now: to write. Go for it. Good luck.

So last April, when NaNoWriMo contacted me, I had decided that PEGASUS was two books, and had cheered up a lot.  My due date was the end of August—and for once in my life I was going to meet a deadline with no problem.  NaNoWriMo suggested I send my encouraging words to them by the beginning of August. Fine. Happy to. Thanks for asking.

I got to the end of the third draft of the first volume of PEGASUS on 13 September. But PEGASUS has not been one of the easy brush-and-plait ones. I’m still combing the burrs out. I am going to make it.  I am going to turn PEGASUS in on the 8th of October. I’m even going to get my pep talk in to NaNoWriMo by tomorrow.

If I can do these impossible things, you can do the impossible thing of writing the first draft of your novel in a month. It’s a first draft!  It does not have to be a thing of beauty!  Don’t worry about the spelling (or the consistency)! Just write it. I bet you can even get to the end, and find out what it is.

And may you have an absolutely brilliant time doing it. Writing can be the worst, and often is—but it can also be the best. May you come out of that month knowing what you want to do next, and eager to keep going. Try to remember the peregrine days on the days that your husband/wife/roommate/dog needs steel wool to get you off the floor. And keep writing: the only way you can learn how your stories work is by letting them tell you. By putting live words together.

Good luck. 

Robin McKinley
 

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A Video from Tim Ferris at TED Talk

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via samiviitamaki.com

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kristin Cashore <nanowrimo_loves_you@nanowrimo.org>
Date: 2009/11/21
Subject: [NaNoWriMo] Week Three pep talk from Kristin Cashore

Greetings, fellow novelists!

So, now that you've been writing for a few weeks, here's my question. Have you started to realize what you've gotten yourself into? Is the realization accompanied by a creeping sense of panic?

If your answer is no, rock on. But if your answer is yes—if your novel has gotten more complicated than you ever thought it would—if you're not sure you've got what it takes to pull this project off—then I'm here for you today with a message, and the message is: don't panic. Don't panic! No one would ever do anything great if they knew at the outset what they were getting themselves into. And I happen to know, at the core of my soul, that you can do this. How do I know? Because I've been there, many times. Sometimes it feels like my permanent state of being. And you know what? I've learned that I'm capable of a lot more than I generally think I am—and you are, too.

A lot of people who don't write novels don't really understand what it's like. They think that something easy to read must have been easy to write. What a lark! How fun to just let your imagination run wild and jot down stories all day!

I suppose there's nothing wrong with these people. Doubtless, there are thousands of occupations I don't appreciate the complexity of. For example, doesn't it seem like it would be fun to be the weatherman? But, then, everybody expects you to predict unpredictable events, and when you get it wrong, everyone thinks you're a bozo. Plus, you probably have to sit still in a chair for ages every day while people do your makeup and spray smelly things into your hair.

Here's what it starts to be like for me somewhere in the midsection of a novel:

(1) I've written the beginning, but I'm pretty sure it's a pile of crap.

(2) The end, when I even dare to contemplate it, feels as far away as Uranus.

(3) The prose I'm writing right now, here in the middle, sounds like a stiff little busybody who's sat down too hard on a nettle.

(4) I've discovered that my plot, even if it's an engaging plot, has sections that are not engaging to write, and I'm bogged down in those doldrums sections, when all I want is to move on to the exciting parts that are just ahead —but I can't, not until I've written the parts that will get me there. Boring!

(5) The house is strewn with post-it notes on which are written about a gazillion important reminders of things I must somehow remember to find a way to weave into the novel at some point, although, where, I can't imagine. Some of the post-it notes are written hastily in a code I have since forgotten. ("He is temperamentally sweet, but dangerous, like Jake." That would be very helpful, if I had the slightest idea to whom "he" refers, or if I knew anyone named Jake.)

(6) Worst of all, whenever I take a step back and try to examine objectively this unstructured mess that is half created and half still living in my head and heart and hope (and on a gazillion post-it notes)... I get this horrible, sinking feeling that my novel isn't actually about anything.

Does any of that sound familiar to you?

Listen. Learning to write 50,000 words means learning a whole pile of skills, but they're learnable skills, and you learn them by writing. One of those skills is finding your own technique for dealing with all the voices that are constantly telling you, in one way or another, what a bonehead you are and how bad you are at this and how doomed your project is. I'm not saying don't listen to the voices. Go ahead and listen to them— if you try to ignore them, sometimes they only scream louder. I'm only saying, don't believe them— and, most importantly, don't let them decide how you spend your day. Maybe laugh and give them a hug and say to them, "Yes, you're sad and lonely and desperate for my attention, aren't you? Well, thank you for visiting; stay as long as you need to; but, by the way, I think we're going to have to agree to disagree. Because I know I can do this, and, as it happens, you can't stop me. Want to sit with me at my desk while I show you what I mean?"

Self-doubt and fear are just part of the process. Those voices are never going to go away. Write anyway. Take a breath; go for a walk; look at the stars; listen to OutKast and shake it like a Polaroid picture; and then, sit down and write anyway. Incidentally, I think the fastest I've ever written 50,000 words was in about eight months. I don't actually keep track of word count, I just keep track of whether or not I'm making progress, and I think that's what NaNoWriMo is about: getting into the habit of making progress. And progress is something every writer needs to define for him- or herself. Throwing out the last twenty pages you just wrote can involve just as much progress as writing three new ones. So try not to beat yourself up if your novel makes it clear to you that you're going to have to shift your goals.

Breathe. Be kind to yourself. Don't panic. Take risks. Make messes. Decide every day that in your writing toolbox, next to the fear and self-doubt, you are also going to keep at least one tiny little seed of faith. That's all you need to keep going—one mustard seed. Keep tight hold on that faith, and keep writing.
 

-Kristin Cashore

You can learn more about Kristin Cashore's work here.

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I've got two emails already from NaNoWriMo. I signed up for NaNoWriMo at the beginning of the month but so far I have only got the author's name on my book. Anyway I'm happy to be able to follow this amazing project and get emails and info from participants. If you are a writer of any kind I am pretty sure that you will like those inspiring emails with great stories and tips. So If NanoWriMo sends more peep talks and stories than I will share them with you.

Here comes the first one:

Okay, NaNoWriMo folks, let me guess.

Right now a lot of you are doing the same thing I'm doing, staring at this piece of screen in order to put off actually writing, because at this moment in time the writing is decidedly starting to suck. You are stuck; worse, you're bored. You're thinking you were bounced repeatedly on your head when you were small and easy to bounce. You're thinking you have no talent.

So am I. The chief difference between us, probably, is that I've been at this for a long time and I know where to go for help. I know I can throw in a new character and get more content from the way the old ones react to the new one. Who becomes friends; who becomes rivals? Who's lousy with babies when the newcomer is a baby? Who can't deal with people who live a non-standard lifestyle?

Have something happen: the power goes out; there's a car accident; there's a flood; there's a war; there's an epidemic. All kinds of new problems and new heroes arise, often the last people you expected to be heroic. Set characters in motion, even if it's just to higher ground. You learn something, you can tell us something, by how people deal with with something that requires them to assemble themselves and move from their comfort zone.

Talk it out with someone you trust, someone who shares your tastes. You may not like their ideas, but something they say may spark the idea that will work for you.

Go for a walk. Watch a TV show. Have a nice cup of something soothing. Then throw any old thing at the page. Don't worry if it's any good or not. Don't back up and cut. Don't rewrite. Just throw whatever comes to mind at the page. The idea is to finish, remember? You have a whole different month for that.  ;-)

These times are a colossal pain, there is no denying it. In desperation, I will time my breaks. Twenty minutes to read, and I'm back to the desk, to turn out a page, or two. Another twenty minutes break, then back for that page or two. Sooner or later my characters will get out of the wagon or off the ship, and they'll start doing things again.

Just keep after it. Think of how proud of yourselves you'll be once you have that novel-length manuscript in your hand! There is nothing like it, nothing like knowing you have finished something of that length.

Go for it!

Tammy

You can learn more about Tamora Pierce's writing here.

And Lindsey's amazing conflict with her protagonist white knight who actually turned to a jerk:

Hi novelist!

Lindsey here, Community Liaison for NaNoWriMo.

Last week the love interest in my novel did something kind of abhorrent. He drugged the neighbor's dog and blamed it on his girlfriend. I couldn't believe he did that! It was a completely unauthorized move. But once it was done, there was no undoing it. All the things I had planned for him to do and say in upcoming scenes were all wrong—suddenly my knight was a first-class jerk. Even if I went back and deleted the scene, I'd still know what he was capable of. (It seems I have a "no take backs" approach to my characters.)

So I did what any overly emotional, sleep-deprived writer would do: I broke up with him. And in doing so, I kind of broke up with my novel, too. This started having all kinds of adverse affects on my life. I lay awake at night, puzzling over how my good guy went so bad. I couldn't get to work in the morning for all my distracted agonizing over what to do. I was getting out of the shower with shampoo in my hair, leaving the house in my slippers, and dazedly driving to the grocery store instead of to the office. My character was everywhere, begging to be heard, asking to be redeemed. My word count was getting further behind with each passing day, and I was well on my way to being haunted by an imaginary being. But he didn't feel so imaginary; I'd brought the story to life, and those characters, and that world. It was just dangling there in limbo, derailing my focus and turning me into a bit of a loony.

Though I still had no fix in mind and was far from forgiving his behavior, I returned to the scene of my character's crime and gave him a second chance. And you know, the apology that poured forth was fairly epic. His girlfriend forgave him. It was so good that even I forgave him. In fact, this foray into his dark side has done some really great things for the depth of his character. He is less jerk and more badass. The novel has righted itself and everyone seems back on track for the rest of the story to unfold.

In this coming week, if you find yourself mired in a dead end, bored stiff by your protagonist's lackluster performance, or generally feeling that your plot is tripe, don't despair; you actually have the answer. Don't do what I did and shelve your novel. You'll probably go nuts. And you'll have to live with the knowledge that there is a half-dead story out there, haunting you with its zombie characters and shadowy half-world, just waiting for your pen stroke to set it straight. Because that's all it takes: returning to the wreckage and committing yourself anew to the phoenix-like resilience of this world you're writing.

I'll see you at 50K!

Lindsey

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I just found these quotes in an article at MacStories . These supposed to be said by Steve Jobs and they are really food for the mind. Enjoy and don't forget to share your thoughts in the comment section.

“Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.”

“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.”

“We’ve gone through the operating system and looked at everything and asked how can we simplify this and make it more powerful at the same time.”

“Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”

“I want to put a ding in the universe.”

“I was worth over $1,000,000 when I was 23, and over $10,000,000 when I was 24, and over $100,000,000 when I was 25, and it wasn’t that important because I never did it for the money.”

“The Japanese have hit the shores like dead fish. They’re just like dead fish washing up on the shores.”

“Unfortunately, people are not rebelling against Microsoft. They don’t know any better.”

“Bill Gates‘d be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.”

“The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste. And I don’t mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don’t think of original ideas, and they don’t bring much culture into their products.”

“My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better.”

“We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them.”

“Click. Boom. Amazing!”

“You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.”

“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

“Why join the navy if you can be a pirate?”

“A lot of companies have chosen to downsize, and maybe that was the right thing for them. We chose a different path. Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets.”

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”

“Recruiting is hard. It’s just finding the needles in the haystack. You can’t know enough in a one-hour interview.
So, in the end, it’s ultimately based on your gut. How do I feel about this person? What are they like when they’re challenged? I ask everybody that: ‘Why are you here?’ The answers themselves are not what you’re looking for. It’s the meta-data.”

“We’ve had one of these before, when the dot-com bubble burst. What I told our company was that we were just going to invest our way through the downturn, that we weren’t going to lay off people, that we’d taken a tremendous amount of effort to get them into Apple in the first place – the last thing we were going to do is lay them off.”

“I mean, some people say, ‘Oh, God, if [Jobs] got run over by a bus, Apple would be in trouble.’ And, you know, I think it wouldn’t be a party, but there are really capable people at Apple.
My job is to make the whole executive team good enough to be successors, so that’s what I try to do.”

“It’s not about pop culture, and it’s not about fooling people, and it’s not about convincing people that they want something they don’t. We figure out what we want. And I think we’re pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That’s what we get paid to do.
We just want to make great products. (I think he means “insanely great products!“)”

“So when a good idea comes, you know, part of my job is to move it around, just see what different people think, get people talking about it, argue with people about it, get ideas moving among that group of 100 people, get different people together to explore different aspects of it quietly, and, you know – just explore things.”

“When I hire somebody really senior, competence is the ante. They have to be really smart. But the real issue for me is, Are they going to fall in love with Apple? Because if they fall in love with Apple, everything else will take care of itself.
They’ll want to do what’s best for Apple, not what’s best for them, what’s best for Steve, or anybody else. (this actually reiterates my oft-repeated mantra of “ubiquitous evangelism” in companies)”

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.”

“Our DNA is as a consumer company – for that inpidual customer who’s voting thumbs up or thumbs down. That’s who we think about. And we think that our job is to take responsibility for the complete user experience. And if it’s not up to par, it’s our fault, plain and simply.”

“That happens more than you think, because this is not just engineering and science. There is art, too. Sometimes when you’re in the middle of one of these crises, you’re not sure you’re going to make it to the other end. But we’ve always made it, and so we have a certain degree of confidence, although sometimes you wonder.

I think the key thing is that we’re not all terrified at the same time. I mean, we do put our heart and soul into these things.”

“We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life.

Life is brief, and then you die, you know?

And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it.”

“Almost everything–all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure–these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

“In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains of the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.”

“So we went to Atari and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come work for you.’ And they said, ‘No.’ So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, ‘Hey, we don’t need you. You haven’t got through college yet.”

“The people who are doing the work are the moving force behind the Macintosh. My job is to create a space for them, to clear out the rest of the organization and keep it at bay.”

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

“I’m the only person I know that’s lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year…. It’s very character-building.”

“I’m as proud of what we don’t do as I am of what we do.”

“Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles.”

“I’ve always wanted to own and control the primary technology in everything we do.”

“It comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much.”

“It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”

“Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.”

“Insanely Great!”

“I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.”

“It’s rare that you see an artist in his 30s or 40s able to really contribute something amazing.”

“I feel like somebody just punched me in the stomach and knocked all my wind out. I’m only 30 years old and I want to have a chance to continue creating things. I know I’ve got at least one more great computer in me. And Apple is not going to give me a chance to do that.”

“I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”

“Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?”

“The products suck! There’s no sex in them anymore!”

“The cure for Apple is not cost-cutting. The cure for Apple is to innovate its way out of its current predicament.”

“If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it’s worth — and get busy on the next great thing. The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long time ago.”

“You know, I’ve got a plan that could rescue Apple. I can’t say any more than that it’s the perfect product and the perfect strategy for Apple. But nobody there will listen to me.”

“Apple has some tremendous assets, but I believe without some attention, the company could, could, could — I’m searching for the right word — could, could die.”

Source: http://www.macstories.net/stories/inspirational-steve-jobs-quotes/

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Budapest, Andrassy avenue. A funny dog owner showcased his yorkshire terrier with its original GPS.

Egy vicces kutyatulajdonos az Andrássyn próbálta nyomon követni a yorkshire terrierjét.

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A bycicle was hanging from a tree or pole in Andrassy avenue in Budapest.

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My work desk is just the place of lot of inventions. Apple contra apple is just one of them

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Budapest, Andrassy avenue. A funny dog owner showcased his yorkshire terrier with its original GPS.

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Got this Google video from Guy Kawasaki which shows in two minutes what happened to Google in the last ten years. You can discover how exponentially developed Google in the last three years. I'm sure we will be kept entertained in the coming years as well.

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Great advices from Tim Ferris

...and now I even borrowed his book the 4HRworkWeek. Will let you know later how is it.

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A stunning parkour video with some really cool tricks and flips.

Did you know that there is a big difference between Parkour and Freerun?

Parkour = A to B and simplicity Freerunning = A to Q to Z to M to B and showing off. :)

Ok. Not that simple but here you can read a lot more about it.

A selection of Parkour training clips from April/May 2008.

Excelsior is Latin for 'ever upward' or 'higher'.

http://www.pinwc.com

Music used (in order): Hans Zimmerman - Vespertilio Gang Starr - Above The Clouds Promoe - Off The Record (instrumental)

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