Podcasts about mac air

Welcome to another Live EFT Tapping Session on the YOU CAN CALL ME “BOSSY” PODCAST! In today's episode I invite you to a transformative session with Macair, one of my cherished clients. Together, we delve into the struggles and fears that come with managing a business, touching on themes of self-doubt, fear of failure, and the pressure of balancing personal and professional life. Macair opens up about her experiences and desires to shift from feeling overwhelmed and inadequate to embracing empowerment, creativity, and resourcefulness. Tune in as we explore how EFT tapping can help release these emotions, allowing for a newfound sense of confidence and alignment in pursuing one's entrepreneurial dreams. This episode is all about self-discovery and empowerment, providing listeners with valuable insights and inspiration. Throughout the interactive session, I'll guide you through tapping on different meridian points while addressing common self-doubts and fears, ultimately aiming to instill a sense of empowerment and readiness to tackle challenges. So, sit back, follow along, and let's dive into this transformative EFT tapping experience.NEED A VISUAL WHILE YOU TAP? If you need a visual while tapping you can CLICK HERE for the Instagram post I shared with a step-by-step guide.If you want to learn more about EFT Tapping (cause maybe you are new and need more details on what this weird but powerful practice is - I get it) CLICK HERE for the EFT Tapping Intro Episode! Key Takeaways: Social media challenges faced by Macair, including content creation and scheduling. Getting over the fear of being abandoned or left unsupported. Permission to be imperfect, make mistakes, be vulnerable, and be visible. If you enjoyed this episode and are excited for more, please be sure to SUBSCRIBE and write a review to help build momentum and support the show (5-stars would be AWESOME!)_____________________________________________ JOIN US IN - THE CLUB - An annual membership where high-achieving women come together to unapologetically OWN THEIR “BOSSY” in order to rise to the top, make massive impact, and not burn out while doing it. Join TODAY to get access to all past workshop replays and past group coaching calls - always incredible takeaways and AHA moments from reviewing these sessions! Grab your spot in THE CLUB today by CLICKING HERE! _____________________________________________ LET'S FREAKING GO! GRAB THIS FREE DOWNLOAD: GRAB 100 FREE JOURNAL PROMPTS TO OWN YOUR BOSSY BY CLICKING HERE LET'S CONNECT: Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, or join my STAND IN YOUR POWER FACEBOOK GROUP Grab a signed copy of my bestselling book STAND IN YOUR POWER HEREWatch my TEDx Talk “The Wisdom of Your Ancestors Should Be Ignored” HERE

Andreína Espino nos explicó qué cualidades tiene esta nueva laptop.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pediros disculpas porque el anterior podcast, lo tuve que eliminar de Spreaker.Sacad la tarjeta que la vamos a afilar.2.Os voy a recomendar 2 teclados y 1 ratón:Dejaré los enlaces a Amazon afiliados, abajo:3.-Tele LG de 65 "" Oled Puro,para mi body and only for my eyes.:)4.-Voy a cambiar mi MacAir i7 , por un nuevo MacBook Air con chip M3 y 16 gb RAM, el mío lo he cambiado por este, ahorrandome un pastón, me lo han valorado bastante bien y le paso a Apple el viejo.Como siempre os recomendaré unas series y unas pelis.https://amzn.to/43bQOO8 Logitech Pop Keys.https://amzn.to/3v5zHkG ratón clon del MX Master 2Shttps://amzn.to/3Vwt9Xd Teclado Rii RK909, mecánico switch azul , retroiluminado y para conectar a 3 dispositivos, distribución teclas ESPAÑOL , como Dios manda.Un saludo a todos_as:@thor_4

It's an all new That Real Blind Tech Show. Allison, Brian, and Jeanine sit down to recap all the announcements we got at WWDC23.   Even though it is almost an all Apple show, we kick things off discussing a very funny article about Zuckhead.   Unless you have been living underneath a rock, by the way who actually lives underneath a rock? The expression had to come from somewhere. By now you have probably heard that Apple announced Apple Vision Pro. We discuss all the juicy details, and I mean all of them. Unfortunately pre-order's will not begin until early 2024, so start saving now because the glasses ain't cheap.   You will control Apple Vision Pro with your eyes, hands, and voice, and we speculate how people who are blind might control the glasses without their eyes.   We then move on to iOS 17. We start off discussing the accessibility announcements that were announced on Global Accessibility Awareness Day. We then move on to the changes coming to phone, FaceTime, and Messages. Auto-Correct will be getting a long over due update, and dictation is supposed to be improved. A new Name Drop feature will make it easier to share contact info, and a new Journal app is coming to iOS.   Air Tag Sharing will now be possible.   The iPad will be getting new interactive widgets and a new locked screen. You will now be able to work with PDFs in the Notes app, and PDFs are supposed to be easier editable, but who knows about the accessibility of all of this.   Mac OS Sonoma is the name of the new Mac operating system. There is a new Mac Air 15 inch and two new Mac Studio's coming. Web Apps are coming to the Mac along with Widgets on the Desktop. There is a new video conferencing also coming to the Mac. You will now be able to share your PassKeys and Passwords through iCloud, and profiles are coming to safari.   The Air Pod Pro 2's will be getting two new listening modes a conversational mode and an  a new adaptive audio mode. Siri will now supposedly be able to switch Air Play devices with your voice. Oh yeah, I am sure this will work fantastically.   And of course we got the return of the Geek, my favorite Apple employee, Kevin Lynch, Mr. Apple Watch. Snoopy and Woodstock will be coming to the Apple Watch, but wait they don't talk?    Apple Health will now be able to help people with how they are feeling and depression through private surveys, and suggest advice.     And it's more of Watcha Streaming, Watcha Reading.   To contact That Real Blind Tech Show, you can email us at ThatRealBlindTechShow@gmail.com, join our Facebook Group That Real Blind Tech Show, join us on the Twitter @BlindTechShow , or leave us an old school phone message at 929-367-1005, and make sure to visit our website where you can listen to any of our past episodes.

Check out on /abc iView (Australian Story) all about the Developers of NVDA   https://iview.abc.net.au/show/australian-story   Listen to the WWDC Keynote from Apple, and Yes Vision Pro is Real, and Yes, it is fully Accessible   Plus new Mac Air, new Mac Studio, and new Mac Pro.     https://www.apple.com/au/Support this Vision Australia Radio program: https://www.visionaustralia.org/donate?src=radio&type=0&_ga=2.182040610.46191917.1644183916-1718358749.1627963141See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Flew home from OKC after a long day of listening the Joe Schreibvogel lie, and lie, and lie.  This is my opinion.   Oklahoma City: 8:30 a.m.  I step out into the bone chilling air to walk a few short blocks to our attorney's office.  Since arriving the day before, I've stayed out of sight, having all of my meals sent to the room, so that I don't accidentally tip off Joe Schreibvogel that I'm in town.  He's threatened me for years and is absolutely obsessed with his hatred for me.  Howard is still recovering from open-heart surgery and can't make this trip, so he's worried sick, but knows one of us should be here for the Hearing on Assets.   Our attorneys are excellent and specialize in this sort of bankruptcy work, but Joe Schreibvogel is a compulsive liar, from what I've seen, and no one knows his back story better than Howie and I do.  Plus we know the industry, so we can catch him in a lie faster than anyone else.  Part of the strategy is just to throw him off center.  The mere fact that we exist seems to be enough to keep him raving like a loon all day, according to his staff who left from the abuse, but having to sit across the table from either of us just sends him into nose twitching, nail biting, knuckle chewing fits.  He reminds me of a trapped animal, who will chew off their own limbs to escape, as he feverishly gnaws at his own hands.   Knowing the hundreds of cubs he's pimped out and all they have suffered at his hands, it gives me some pleasure to see him so frantic.  I wouldn't have missed this for the world.   But for now, I focused on getting from the hotel to the attorney's office, without Joe Schreibvogel or one of his animal abusing minions interceding.  I must look paranoid as I slow or stop frequently to canvas parked cars, windows, check allies and the open bays of multi level parking garages for the glint of a gun, the red dot of a laser or a person acting suspiciously.  A black sedan has been in the parking lot and is now slowly pulling onto the sidewalk, blocking my path.   Fight or flight?   Yesterday it was 17 degrees and the most snow to ever fall in Oklahoma City in March.  The sidewalks are a treacherous mix of snow, slush and ice.  It's not far, back to the hotel, but part of me is so mad that I'm frozen to the spot while debating, in milliseconds, if there's anything in my bag that would suffice as a weapon to protect myself.   Mental checklist:  There's an iPhone 6+.  It's big, but the rubber case makes it an unlikely choice.  There is my Mac Air laptop, which has a thin, steel edge and just enough weight to be easy to swing and yet could have a pretty good impact.  There is the HDMI cable that I use to connect hotel T.V.s for more screen space, but it's a flat edge and would fail as a garrote.  I peer hard through the dark, tinted windows, to see how many opponents I'm facing… Joe always has his entourage because he can't seem to function if he isn't the center of attention…   Turns out to be a young woman, so caught up in texting that she seems to be oblivious to the fact that she's almost coasted out into traffic while looking at her phone.   One more block to go.   I said I was mad, and the more I learn about this clown, the madder I get.  He flew under my radar until about 2009 (although he will tell you that I was giving him a hard time since 2007) when I discovered that dozens of animal acts, that were traveling the U.S. pimping out cubs, were actually the work of one person.  While that would seem like a bad branding strategy, it was a great way to hide misdeeds.  For now, regardless of how angry it makes me to think of the abuse, I had to attend this hearing, to make sure we made the most of the opportunity to put a stop to it.   At Howie's insistence, Heather has found an off duty officer to be my bodyguard for the rest of the day.  Tall, dark and fiercely protective, he looks like he could take on any trouble the skinny, loud mouthed, self proclaimed “Tiger King” and his band of hooligans could throw our way.  Wearing a crisp shirt and tie under his snug fitting Northface jacket, you can't see the gun he's hiding.  Crew cut hair and dark ski glasses give the mixed message of businessman / secret agent.  Kyle's quiet, and I like that.  He's all business and that means he's not easily distracted.  Before we set out, I have to pry to find that he's got 14 years on the job and likes the challenges of dealing with OKC's underbelly.  This backyard breeder is no big deal to him.   It's only a few blocks to the Federal Courthouse.  A deposition could be taken anywhere, but we have planned it to be in a Judge's courtroom so that all weapons and recording equipment will be left at the check-in area.  The Federal Courthouse is even more strict than regular courthouses and doesn't allow phones, Google Glass, or any sort of gadget that could record or transmit.  Attorneys can get a pass for having their phones, but that's it.  Knowing this, I'd left all of my gear back at the attorney's office, and anyone who knows me, knows how naked I feel without my phone.   We figured that on the first break Joe Schreibvogel would be running outside to call more minions, to try and intimidate me upon leaving the courthouse.  We had planned ahead that at one of the latter breaks, I'd leave with the undercover cop and head home.  It would give me some time before Joe could rally anyone, who sees my work to protect animals, as a direct infringement on their “right” to profit off them.   Today Joe's entourage consisted of one greying, nicotine addicted man, wearing a Tiger King hoodie, and three attorneys.  I wonder who was footing that bill?  Surely they have read through the discovery thus far and have seen Joe Schreibvogel 's propensity for running up bills and then running out on paying them.  Maybe his mother is still providing the gravy train, or maybe it came from the zoo's till, but all day long we will hear Joe cry “poor me, I have no money and must eat what ever friends give me, or the horses and cows I kill and butcher; I can't afford my medicine so I have to depend on others who have my same disease to share theirs with me.”   On and on he whined about how he's never been paid a dime by the park or zoo and how he does it all because he just loves to help people so much.  He tried hard to find someone in the room who would believe his nonsense, and even managed to produce some tears about how his entire involvement in the zoo is to try and educate the current employees on how to care for animals before he dies.  Our attorney, Mel, offers to give Joe some time to compose himself, but Joe is performing and insists that he finish his act before the tears dry up.   No one likes to see a grown man cry, but I know they are just crocodile tears.  No doubt he's used them on his mom from an early age and that's why she's spoiled him and continues to bail him out of one bad business decision after another.  My heart is hardened to the ploy, as I think about the lioness he sewed up, like she was just a rag doll.  She had huge, gaping wounds and Joe played the part of country vet, while his cameras rolled, despite having no medical training to back it up.  In later episodes he talked about having to do it over because his stitches didn't hold.  I see it as his utter neglect of the big cat's needs that caused her so much suffering.  I think it was his desire to be seen as a vet, without having gone through the training to earn him that title, which led him to continue putting her through such misery.  No, I wasn't impressed with his tears.   The purpose of the hearing was to catch Joe Schreibvogel in as many lies as possible so that it would be easy to prove our case to the judge at a later date.  That was like asking the sky to be blue, or the sea to be wet.  It was a very productive day.   Hi, I'm Carole Baskin and I've been writing my story since I was able to write, but when the media goes to share it, they only choose the parts that fit their idea of what will generate views.  If I'm going to share my story, it should be the whole story.  The titles are the dates things happened. If you have any interest in who I really am please start at the beginning of this playlist: http://savethecats.org/   I know there will be people who take things out of context and try to use them to validate their own misconception, but you have access to the whole story.  My hope is that others will recognize themselves in my words and have the strength to do what is right for themselves and our shared planet.     You can help feed the cats at no cost to you using Amazon Smile! Visit BigCatRescue.org/Amazon-smile   You can see photos, videos and more, updated daily at BigCatRescue.org   Check out our main channel at YouTube.com/BigCatRescue   Music (if any) from Epidemic Sound (http://www.epidemicsound.com) This video is for entertainment purposes only and is my opinion.

En @NotiPodHoy ✅ Aseguran que existen más de 171, 567 podcasts en español ✅ Las nuevas MacBook Pro y la Mac Air además de rápidas, son super silenciosas. ✅ Realizarán el Primer Festival Iberoamericano de Podcast «Al oído». ➽ Las audiencias de podcasting podrían duplicarse para 2023. ➽ Lanzan ElasticPod, un servicio que transcribe e indexa el contenido hablado en tus podcasts. ➽ IAB Europe lanza la Guía del comprador de audio digital. ➽ iCON Pro Audio presenta las interfaces de audio Duo22 Live y Duo44.

#xbox #Lumecube #Sony #Oppo Another day , another vlog! 391 Xbox viral video of smoke coming form unit during use apparently a vaper meme ! Some people took the joke as serious though and Microsoft had to come out and let everyone know it wasn't true! Lume cube released a light pole for their lighting system extendable to 6ft and very light at roughly 1/2 a kilo might be a good option for hiking as second tripod too! Apple M1 in the Mac Air has some positives form first uses in real world, and all looking bright except if using heavy video you will have issues unless using final cut pro ! So if using Prem Pro or Da Vinci may pay to wait to upgrade till those software makers can get the marriage to work a little better! Iphone 13 1st rumour already out ! Smaller higher tech battery for 2021!! It never ends does it the ferris wheel of rumours is a hungry bear

Join Ed and Brian for a recap of Apple’s 365th special event of 2020. We start off on a somber note as Brian pays tribute to his first guide dog Nash who recently passed. Disclaimer, if you drop your Air Pods on to a train track, do not go down on the tracks to get them. Really, Apple Lidar already can help blind people know how far other people are away from them? Talk about information I could have used yesterday. iOS 14.2 will now give you a completely useless daily briefing.  HomePod Mini orders have been placed, but will they ever arrive? Then a little promo for Brian who made an appearance on the Yahoo Fantasy Football Podcast and you can read the article about the All Blind Fantasy Football League further down in the show notes. We then dive in to Apple’s One More Thing monthly presentation, starting off with our thoughts about the new M1 chip. RIP boot Camp. The new Mac Air keyboards will be making some interesting changes adding dedicated dictation, do not disturb, and spotlight keys. For a full VoiceOver user, is there any reason to get a MacBook Pro with the Touch Bar? iOS apps will they or won’t they be coming to your Arm Macs, but more importantly will they be accessible? Will you be installing Mac OS Big Sur on launch day? And of course it is more of Whatcha Streaming, Watcha Reading. To contact us email us in at ThatBlindTechShow@gmail.com, Join us on Facebook at That Real Blind Tech Show, Tweet us at @BlindTechShow, or call us and leave a message at 929-367-1005. Articles Discussed In This episode. 1. There is now a Vacuum specifically designed to pick up Air Pods https://9to5mac.com/2020/11/06/theres-now-a-vacuum-specifically-designed-to-pick-up-airpods-dropped-onto-train-tracks/ 2. iPhone 12 Pro can use Lidar to help blind people detect other people https://mashable.com/article/apple-iphone-people-detection/ 3. With the iOS 14.2 update you can now ask Siri for a daily update. 4. Brian Fischler Discusses The All Blind Football League with Yahoo Fantasy https://sports.yahoo.com/standup-comic-creates-allblind-fantasy-football-league-after-losing-his-sight-084149770.html          5. The 5 Biggest Announcements from Apple’s One More Thing https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/10/21550892/apple-arm-silicon-event-macbook-air-pro-mini-mac-big-sur-biggest-announcements 6. Major Developers opting out of Mac App Store before Apple Silicon Release https://www.imore.com/major-developers-opt-out-mac-app-store-ahead-apple-silicon-launch 7. Mac OS Big Sur Dropping on November 12th https://www.appleworld.today/blog/2020/11/10/macos-big-sur-to-be-released-into-the-wild-on-thursday  

Read for you by Macair Gordon

Hacer tiempo con un libro, mientras se lava tu ropa, por lo general es buena idea, salvo que te sientes al lado de alguien que chatea y chatea, en la mejor Mac Air. Música: Tes Défauts, de Löhstana David

Show Summary: Brian Fischler, from That Blind Tech Show, gives a great description and overview of the new 2018 MacAir from Apple. From ports to keyboard and Track Pad gestures, Brian runs through the paces as well as his way of setting up the MacAir with iCloud and sharing across his other Apple devices. Here are some common commands that Brian used throughout the demo: First, the VO reference is the Command and Option keys pressed down. This is always associated with another key or keys pressed down as well. VO+space – Activates an action such as pressing a button, tab, link, etc. VO+ right or left arrow – moves cursor left or right. VO-up or down arrow – moves cursor up or down. VO Shift + D – Go to Desktop VO Shift Down Arrow – interact with item. VO Shift Up Arrow – Stop interacting with item. Tip: VO + K -  Start Keyboard help, type keys to hear their names, hold down the VO keys while typing keys to here Voice Over commands. Press the escape key in the upper left hand corner to stop keyboard help. Contact Thank you for listening. Send us Feedback via email Follow us on Twitter @BlindTechShow That Blind Tech Show is produced in part with Blind Abilities Network You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store. Get the Free blind Abilities App on the Google Play Store

Show Summary: Brian Fischler, from That Blind Tech Show, gives a great description and overview of the new 2018 MacAir from Apple. From ports to keyboard and Track Pad gestures, Brian runs through the paces as well as his way of setting up the MacAir with iCloud and sharing across his other Apple devices. Here are some common commands that Brian used throughout the demo: First, the VO reference is the Command and Option keys pressed down. This is always associated with another key or keys pressed down as well. VO+space – Activates an action such as pressing a button, tab, link, etc. VO+ right or left arrow – moves cursor left or right. VO-up or down arrow – moves cursor up or down. VO Shift + D – Go to Desktop VO Shift Down Arrow – interact with item. VO Shift Up Arrow – Stop interacting with item. Tip: VO + K -  Start Keyboard help, type keys to hear their names, hold down the VO keys while typing keys to here Voice Over commands. Press the escape key in the upper left hand corner to stop keyboard help. Contact Thank you for listening. Send us Feedback via email Follow us on Twitter @BlindTechShow That Blind Tech Show is produced in part with Blind Abilities Network You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store. Get the Free blind Abilities App on the Google Play Store

Happy belated Father’s Day! In this episode, we talk about how to be an efficient working Dad. Zion grew his business by 854% revenue wise over a 5 year period while raising 3 kids under 4 - so he knows what it takes :) We go through our tips including: - Mastering your phone (the workflow app is amazing - https://workflow.is) - Apple Airpods (So good for taking work calls on the go and listening to podcasts) - Use a light laptop (E.g. Mac Air or lightweight PC laptop) - Run or power-walk from place to place - Work while watching Netflix with your wife - Work while rocking your baby to sleep If you have any questions, please hit us up on any of the following: www.facebook.com/Alykadigital/ www.instagram.com/alykadigital/ www.linkedin.com/in/zion-ong-40942817/ perth@alyka.com.au Download Workflow here -> https://workflow.is Enjoy!

International bestselling sci-fi and thriller novelist and screenwriter, Blake Crouch, took time-out from his busy schedule to talk to me about his mind-bending new book Dark Matter, and adapting his work for both film and TV. Rainmaker.FM is Brought to You By Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting. Start getting more from your site today! The hybrid author has penned more than a dozen novels that have been translated into over 30 languages, and his short fiction has appeared in numerous publications. In addition to having his Wayward Pines trilogy adapted into a #1 hit TV show by FOX, Blake wrote the screenplay for his latest novel, Dark Matter, for Sony Pictures. He also recently co-created Good Behavior, a TNT show based on his novellas, starring Michelle Dockery (set to premiere November 15th, 2016). His novel Dark Matter was described by the NY Times as an, “… alternate-universe science fiction …. countdown thriller in which the hero must accomplish an impossible task,” and bestselling sci-fi author Andy Weir called it, “An exciting, ingeniously plotted adventure about love, regret, and quantum superposition.” If you’re a fan of The Writer Files, click subscribe to automatically see new interviews. If you missed the first half you can find it right here. In Part Two of this file Blake Crouch and I discuss: The author’s tips for conquering writer’s block Why versioning and backing up drafts is crucial How to lean into procrastination and find your most productive writing time Why understanding that ‘everything’s been written,’ can set your creativity free Why you need to write the kind of book you want to read Listen to The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes Audible is Offering a Free Audiobook Download with a 30-day Trial: Grab Your Free Audiobook Here – audibletrial.com/rainmaker BlakeCrouch.com Dark Matter: A Novel – Blake Crouch Blake Crouch on Facebook Blake Crouch on Twitter Kelton Reid on Twitter The Transcript How Bestselling Sci-fi Thriller Author Blake Crouch Writes: Part Two Voiceover: Rainmaker FM Kelton Reid: Welcome back to the Writer Files, I am still your host, Kelton Reid, here to take you on yet another tour of the habits, habitats, and brains of renowned writers to learn their secrets. In part two of this file, the international best selling sci-fi and thriller novelist and screenwriter, Blake Crouch, returned to talk to me about his mind-bending new book, Dark Matter, and adapting his work for both film and TV. The hybrid author has penned more than a dozen novels that have been translated into over 30 languages and his short fiction has appeared in numerous publications. In addition to having his Wayward Pines trilogy adapted into a number one hit TV show by Fox, Blake wrote the screenplay for his latest novel, Dark Matter, for Sony Pictures. He also recently co-created Good Behavior, a TNT show based on his novelas starring Michelle Dockery. His novel, Dark Matter was described by the New York Times as an alternate universe sci-fi countdown thriller in which the hero must accomplish an impossible task, and best-selling sci-fi author Andy Weir called it an exciting and geniously plotted adventure about love, regret, and quantum superposition. In part two of this file, Blake and I discuss the author’s tips for conquering writer’s block, why versioning and backing up drafts is crucial, how to lean into procrastination and find your most productive writing time, why understanding that everything’s been written can set your creativity free, and why you need to write the kind of book you want to read. If you’re a fan of The Writer Files please click “subscribe” to automatically see new interviews as soon as they’re published. If you miss the first half of this show, you can find it in the archives on iTunes, on WriterFiles.FM, and in the show notes. This episode of The Writer Files is brought to you by Audible. I ll have more on their special offer later in the show but if you love audiobooks or you’ve always wanted to give them a try, you can check out over 180,000 titles right now at Audibletrial.com/Rainmaker. And you’re a fan of Christopher Nolan’s work. I definitely get that kind of atmosphere from your book. Blake Crouch: He does original … He writes, I mean, he obviously did the Batman movies, but he writes these very cool speculative thriller ideas that also have an emotional core. I just love his approach. I love the way he presents his ideas, like when he dropped that first Inception trailer. You’re like, What is this about? They’re running upside down in a hallway, and there’s nothing else. I can’t get enough of that kind of stuff. He’s definitely a huge inspiration for me. The Author s Tips for Conquering Writer s Block Kelton Reid: Yeah, for sure. I got tinges of Memento at times from Dark Matter, but you describe it as if Christopher Nolan directed It’s a Wonderful Life, which is hilarious and apropos, for sure. So do you believe in writer’s block, the million dollar author question? Blake Crouch: Yeah, I guess I do. I believe that you go through periods of time where the ideas are really challenging and eluding you. Why those crop up, I think, probably owe to a whole host of psychological reasons. But, I do think that just the idea of writer’s block, I mean, people say like, Oh, writer’s block doesn’t exist. You just sit down and you write. That sounds great, but you can also just sit down and write a bunch of ****, and you’re not actually getting closer to your goal of writing the next great thing. What’s hard is writing a book that was as good or better as the last one you wrote, which you thought was the best thing you could ever do at that point in time. That’s the thing that’s really hard, and I think that’s what leads down the path towards writer’s block. It’s not really like, Oh I just can’t write for reasons. It’s more like, When I’m not writing, it’s because I haven’t found the idea that makes me want to jump up and down and tell the world this story. That’s, for me, what writer’s block is. It’s not just not being able to string a sentence together, it’s not having the idea that makes me want to string sentences together. Kelton Reid: Yeah, yeah. So much of writing is thinking, is it not? Kind of processing, letting your brain do Blake Crouch: All of it. 90% of it. Kelton Reid: For sure. Are you a PC or a Mac user, by the way? Blake Crouch: I mean, I’ve been a Mac for the last, I don’t know, five or so years. I don’t know. When did Mac stop being cool? I don’t know when that happened, but it’s just not cool anymore. They’re not innovating, so I don’t know, I have a feeling after this Mac Air I’m probably going to go back to PC for my next book. Kelton Reid: Interesting. Blake Crouch: I just can’t. Before Mac, I had these giant, chunky PCs. You could hear, it’s like a jet engine when they were running. I love my Mac Air. I love the battery life on it. But, the general Apple approach is sort of wearing on me lately. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Are you a Scrivener user, or do you use Microsoft Word primarily for your stuff? Blake Crouch: I don’t know what Scrivener is, so … Yeah, I use Microsoft Word. Kelton Reid: Okay. Blake Crouch: Obsessed with fonts. Obsessed with fonts. I love new fonts and discovering fonts and that’s my favorite way to procrastinate. Maybe I should pick a cool new font, maybe that ll and it actually does jar me out of things occasionally. And I always think I’m going to use these fonts right up until the end, but when it’s time to turn them in, I pretty much bring it all back to Times New Roman 12, and keep it very normal. I think it’s actually more helpful for people who are reading manuscripts in manuscript form to not have any distractions. The font itself doesn’t help the story, they just need to be able to read the story and characters in a vacuum. Why Versioning and Backing up Drafts is Crucial Kelton Reid: That’s right. Do you have any great organizational hacks for writers? I mean, you must have, I d imagine, quite a few in place if you’re juggling the screenwriting thing and the prose thing. Do you have some you could share with us? Blake Crouch: I have, if you looked into my Dropbox I have tons of folders. I keep every new, substantial new, when I finish a manuscript, when I feel like all right, that’s my first draft, I’ll save that, then I’ll copy that, and I’ll paste it into a new folder that’s second draft. I never go back to the first draft again. It’s always there in case I want to return to it. I think it’s good and important to have an iteration of every draft of the novel as you move through the writing process. I’m just looking here now, I m curious how many I have. Dark Matter has… Let’s see, accepted manuscripts, I have so many folders. I have accepted manuscripts. I have a copy edited folder. I have a galley copy folder. I have a marketing folder. I have a miscellaneous folder where I threw everything else. I basically have five drafts of Dark Matter. Kelton Reid: Hmm. Blake Crouch: That would be my big one is just you can’t have enough folders. Kelton Reid: Yeah. It’s all backed up to the Cloud there so you never Blake Crouch: It’s all backed up, I back it up to Dropbox. How to Lean into Procrastination and Find Your Most Productive Writing Time Kelton Reid: Cool cool. All right. How does Blake Crouch beat the dreaded procrastination? Do you kind of lean into it? Blake Crouch: I use Freedom sometimes. Have you ever heard of that program where it turns your internet off? I mean, it’s stupid, but I’ll do that sometimes. I find that I write most of my words for the day in very short bursts of time. Most of it is just like, procrastinating, emails, things like that, but then all the work that actually gets done say, in a four hour “writing period” happens in about 30 minutes. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Blake Crouch: Lately, I’ve been trying to think more in terms of like, tuning into those periods of bursts of creativity and capturing those. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Blake Crouch: That’s the best I can offer. I mean, procrastinating, I think is part of it. Kelton Reid: For sure. Blake Crouch: I don’t really procrastinate when I know what I’m doing. I think the procrastination comes from not being 100% sure of how the scene should go and letting my subconscious kind of work on it while I do other things. Kelton Reid: Yeah, yeah. How does Blake Crouch unplug at the end of a long writing day? Blake Crouch: Well, I love to have a glass of wine and read over and paper what I’ve written. Print it out, read it over on paper, and just get a sense of how it reads with a little bit of distance and with a tiny bit of time. After I do that, once I’ve done that, I don’t think about it anymore. I’m like, done. I love to go and run. That’s why I like to, if I get my stuff done by noon, I have the rest of the day to go play. Kelton Reid: Love it, I love it. We will be right back after a very short break. Thanks so much for listening to the Writer Files. This episode of The Writer Files is brought to you by Audible, offering over 180,000 audiobook titles to choose from. Audible seamlessly delivers the world’s both fiction and nonfiction to your iPhone, Android, Kindle or computer. For Rainmaker FM listeners, Audible is offering a free audiobook download with a 30 day trial to give you the opportunity to check them out. Grab your free audiobook right now by visiting Audibletrial.com/Rainmaker. I just hopped over there to grab Stephen King’s epic novel 11.22.63, about an English teacher who goes back in time to prevent the assassination of JFK. You can download your pick or any other audiobook free by heading over to Audibletrial.com/Rainmaker. To download your free audiobook today, go to Audibletrial.com/Rainmaker. Why Understanding that Everything s Been Written, can Set Your Creativity Free Kelton Reid: Let’s cruise through some creativity questions. How do you define creativity? Do you have a definition? Blake Crouch:What occurs to me as you say that is I think creativity is taking all of the works of art, whether it’s books and paintings and movies and things, taking all of those themes and storylines that have inspired you over the years, and finding a way to mold and shape those into something new and fresh, that also says something about where you are at this point in your life. Cormac McCarthy had a kind of a famous saying, when someone asks him about originality, he was like, Well, all books are made of other books. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Blake Crouch: It’s so true, it’s so true. There is actually nothing purely original, and I think understanding that really frees you up to write about what you want to be writing about. I mean, you could look at Dark Matter … I mean, it’s one of the reasons I hesitated to write Dark Matter at first. Because it’s like, a multiverse story, basically, at heart. It’s about the multiverse, or alternate realities. And yes, we’ve had many, many, many stories like that. If that’s your frame of reference in the way you view things, which I find is the way reviewers tend to evaluate books, then you’ll never write anything. You’ll truly never write anything because there’s nothing really original left. The only thing, the only way that originality comes into play is that you are telling a story that has probably been told many times before, but you’re telling it in your voice and you’re telling it from your unique camera angle of life as you see it, with all the baggage that you have in your life at that moment. That’s where the originality comes from, and that’s what creativity is. It isn’t coming up with the new plot thing that no one’s ever come up with before, because I’m pretty sure there aren’t any of those left. Kelton Reid: I love that, very well put. What do you think, in your estimation, makes a writer truly great? Blake Crouch: I think continuing to evolve and push their own boundaries. You know, I have a lot of friends in this business, and one of the things you do is you read each other’s manuscripts. That s the first line of defense in letting people know where it’s succeeding and where you think it’s not succeeding. Whenever I see a writer trying actively and desperately to take a quantum leap in what they do, I respect that. I think great writers are not writing the same book over and over again. They are really kind of pushing themselves in the nature of their storytelling. That, to me, is what turns me on in the writers that I love. Kelton Reid: Nice, nice. Do you have a couple faves sitting there on your nightstand right now? Blake Crouch: What have I read? I mean, I’ve read a bunch of debuts lately. I’ve kind of been on a blurbing streak. I grew up loving Pat Conroy, because he was the first adult fiction writer I ever read. I read the Prince of Tides when I was 12. I mean, obviously my writing couldn’t be more different from his, but I have a real sentimental nostalgic love of his books. Cormac McCarthy is one of those writers I would place in that category of you just don’t know what his next book is going to be. If you look at something like All the Pretty Horses in the Border Trilogy to The Road, oh I’m sorry, to No Country for Old Men, which is in some ways just a thriller, to The Road, which is just science fiction, he would definitely be up there. I also read this awesome memoir called When Breath Becomes Air, which just came out, by the neuroscientist, or a neurosurgeon, rather, who gets a diagnosis of lung cancer when he is like 36 and he starts writing a memoir about his, basically last 2 years. It’s just devastating. Love Stephen King’s, I just finished the first book in the Dark Tower series, which I’ve never read. I’m blown away by it. Kelton Reid: Fantastic. Well, I know we’re running short on time here. Your latest, Dark Matter, opens with the great T.S. Eliot quote. Do you have another quote just hanging over your desk that you wanted to drop on us? Blake Crouch: Like a good writing quote? Kelton Reid: Yeah, or just a quote in general that you come back to. Blake Crouch: Yeah. Hmm. I have so many. Trying to think of a good one here. There is a really cool one by Margaret Mitchell. She said, I sweat blood to make my style simple and stripped bare. That’s really become true to me over the last seven years. Each book seems to be a condensing of style and trying to say more with less. That’s kind of been my North Star over the last few years from book to book. Kelton Reid: Very nice, very nice. Yeah, definitely I’m a fan of your work. Cormac McCarthy came to mind. Also too, The Road has that very poetic style and it’s dark, kind of gritty sci-fi style. Your book has very poetic kind of structuring that’s just truly compelling. Blake Crouch: Thank you. Why You Need to Write the Kind of Book You Want to Read Kelton Reid: I would encourage listeners to find Dark Matter, the sci-fi thriller, it’s definitely kind of a mind-bender, but it’s a fantastic read. Congratulations on the successes of that. Did you have any other nuggets you wanted to drop on your fellow scribes on keeping the ink flowing, keeping the cursor moving? Blake Crouch:Yeah, no, I think the people always ask, What’s the best advice that you have? I really think it’s just, Write the kind of book that you would want to read. That’s it. Also have expectations, like if the kind of book that you’re dying to read is a quiet little gem that’s written in colloquial French set in the late 1700s, awesome, you should definitely write that book. You should also know that probably there’s not thousands and thousands of people who want to read that. I think it’s writing what you want to write, but also having expectations about what the audience actually is for what you want to write. Kelton Reid: Love it, I love it. Lock, stock, and barrel with Blake Crouch. I believe that we can find most of your books at BlakeCrouch.com. There’s a books tab there where you can find all of these fantastic books by the author. Anywhere else you want to connect with readers and writers out there? Blake Crouch: They can always find me on Twitter and Facebook. It’s fairly easy to find. Kelton Reid: Fantastic, well thank you so much for taking time out of your incredibly busy schedule to rap with us about your process. Blake Crouch: Hey, this was a blast. Kelton Reid: Awesome. Hopefully, you will come back for your next one. Blake Crouch: I’d love to. Kelton Reid: All right, cheers. Thanks so much for joining me for this half of a tour through the writer’s process. If you enjoy The Writer Files podcast please subscribe to the show and leave us a rating or a review on iTunes to help other writers find us. For more episodes, or to just leave a comment or a question, you can drop by WriterFiles.FM. You can always chat with me on Twitter @KeltonReid. Cheers, talk to you next week.

New York Times bestselling author and co-founder of Wired magazine, Kevin Kelly, stopped by the show to chat with me about his journey from travel journalist to famed futurist. Mr. Kelly’s storied and winding career has taken him around the world in search of visions of the new digital frontier. Kevin is a renowned TED speaker and author of multiple bestsellers including his latest, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future, a title that offers an optimistic roadmap of how new technologies will shape humanity. Dubbed “the Most Interesting Man in the World” by Tim Ferris, Mr. Kelly began writing on the internet near its inception and never looked back. He has taken gigs including Editor for the Whole Earth Review, and presently Senior Maverick at Wired magazine, a magazine he co-founded in 1993, and where he served as Executive Editor until 1999. Join us for this two-part interview, and if you’re a fan of the show, please click “subscribe” to automatically see new interviews, and help other writers find us. If you missed the first half you can find it right here. In Part Two of the file Kevin Kelly and I discuss: Why the Author Can’t Write on the Road The Importance of Delegation as a Writer The Cool Tools Kevin Kelly Uses to Get Words on the Page A Futurist’s Expansive Definition of Creativity How Lateral Thinking Can Improve Your Writing Why Steven Spielberg Asked Mr. Kelly to Predict the Future Listen to The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes Kevin Kelly’s Personal Website The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future – Kevin Kelly 1,000 True Fans The Act of Creation – Arthur Koestler Oblique Strategies Writer Emergency Pack – John August Kevin Kelly on Google+ Kevin Kelly on Twitter Kelton Reid on Twitter The Transcript How Wired Magazine’s Senior Maverick Kevin Kelly Writes: Part Two Jerod Morris: Hey, Jerod Morris here. If you know anything about Rainmaker Digital and Copyblogger, you may know that we produce incredible live events. Some would say that we produce incredible live events as an excuse to throw great parties, but that’s another story. We’ve got another one coming up this October in Denver. It’s called Digital Commerce Summit and it is entirely focused on giving you the smartest ways to create and sell digital products and services. You can find out more at Rainmaker.FM/summit. That’s Rainmaker.FM/summit. We’ll be talking about Digital Commerce Summit in more detail as it gets closer, but for now I’d like to let a few attendees from our past events speak for us. Attendee 1: For me, it’s just hearing from the experts. This is my first industry event, so it’s awesome to learn new stuff and also get confirmation that we’re not doing it completely wrong where I work. Attendee 2: The best part of the conference, for me, is being able to mingle with people and realize that you have connections with everyone here. It feels like LinkedIn live. I also love the parties after each day, being able to talk to the speakers, talk to other people who are here for the first time, people who have been here before. Attendee 3: I think the best part of the conference, for me, is understanding how I can service my customers a little more easily. Seeing all the different facets and components of various enterprises then helps me pick the best tools. Jerod Morris: Hey, we agree. One of the biggest reasons we host the conference every year is so that we can learn how to service our customers — people like you — more easily. Here are just a few more words from folks who have come to our past live events. Attendee 4: It’s really fun. I think it’s a great mix of beginner information and advanced information. I’m really learning a lot and having a lot of fun. Attendee 5: The conference is great, especially because it’s a single-track conference where you don’t get distracted by “Which session should I go to?” And, “Am I missing something?” Attendee 6: The training and everything — the speakers have been awesome — but I think the coolest aspect for me has been connecting with those people who are putting it on and the other attendees. Jerod Morris: That’s it for now. There’s a lot more to come on Digital Commerce Summit. I really hope to see you there in October. Again, to get all the details and the very best deal on tickets, head over to Rainmaker.FM/summit. That’s Rainmaker.FM/summit. Kelton Reid: These are The Writer Files, a tour of the habits, habitats, and brains of working writers from online content creators to fictionists, journalists, entrepreneurs, then beyond. I’m your host, Kelton Reid, writer, podcaster, and mediaphile. Each week we’ll discover how great writers keep the ink flowing, the cursor moving, and avoid writer’s block. New York Times best-selling author and co-founder of Wired Magazine, Kevin Kelly, stopped by the show this week and chatted with me about his journey from travel journalist to famed futurist. Mr. Kelly’s storied and winding career has taken him around the world in search of visions of the new digital frontier. He’s a renowned TED speaker and author of multiple best-sellers, including his latest, at The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future, a title that offers an optimistic roadmap of how new technologies will shape humanity. Dubbed, “The Most Interesting Man in The World” by Tim Ferriss, Mr. Kelly began writing on the Internet near its inception and never looked back, taking gigs including editor for The Whole Earth Review and, presently, Senior Maverick at Wired Magazine, a magazine he co-founded in 1993 where he served as executive editor until 1999. Join us for this two-part interview. If you are a fan of the show, please click “subscribe” to automatically see new interviews with your favorite authors and help other writers to find us. If you missed the first half of this show, you can find it at Writerfiles.FM in the show notes. In part two of the file, Kevin and I discuss why the author can’t write on the road, the importance of delegation as a writer, the Cool Tools Kevin Kelly uses to get words onto the page, a futurist’s expansive definition of creativity, how lateral thinking can improve your writing, and the day Steven Spielberg asked Mr. Kelly to predict the future. Why the Author Can’t Write on the Road Kelton Reid: Do you have an office? Once you’ve traveled the world and gotten all the stuff you need — researched all the stuff — do you go back to the office then, or do you feel like you can write on the road? Kevin Kelly: I cannot write on the road at all. I can’t even write on planes. I can’t even write in hotel rooms. I do all my writing here. I have this magnificent studio. I call it a studio, it’s two stories. It’s in California. It’s all white. It’s got a huge ceiling. There are two stories of books. I have all my toys — my Lego wall here. I have a Styro Bot. I built it for me and my way of working. Camille’s just right over there. I have another assistant too, who does the website stuff. I have my big, huge whiteboard. I’ve got everything. I have a standing — and a ball, so I can move from standing to sitting within seconds. I need to be here to get my writing done, and I have the privilege of being able to control my time that way. I don’t know if I need to, but that’s how I choose to. That works for me. You’re right about the travel. When I’m traveling there’s two kinds — there’s the traveling for doing talks … My livelihood is basically giving talks in China. Most of my fans are in China. I have 20 times the number of fans in China than I do in the U.S., so I go to China to do talks. Because I have this obsession with Asia, I usually will piggyback other trips either in China or elsewhere around Asia when I go because I’m photographing the disappearing Asia. When I’m in photograph mode I can do nothing else. It’s really weird, but I become totally a camera. I’m just a camera. I’m a walking camera. I started off in the 1970s doing that. That’s what my first thing was. Instead of going to college, I went to Asia as a photographer and I was photographing the stuff. I was a camera. I worked from the beginning of daylight to the end of daylight as a camera. Still when I go to Asia — the same thing, I am just there. Then, when I’m in the hotel, I’m downloading, backing up all my stuff. Doing the minimum amount of e-mail that I need to do. Then I’m in bed. Then the next day, I’m just a camera. I find it really hard to — I’m happy if I can do my e-mail. I can’t write then. When I come back, then I can shift. I’ll leave the camera off to the side and then I can try and write. Kelton Reid: That sounds cool. It sounds like you’ve got these processes in place that help you to process, crunch all the information you see and then you get back to the designated writing space to get into the flow. The Importance of Delegation as a Writer Kevin Kelly: The other thing that I learned to do at Wired, working through the magazine, was delegate and hire. For 10 years I did Cool Tools myself. Five days a week, I was editing. I wasn’t writing all those reviews, but I was soliciting, getting them in, editing everybody, sending it back, going rounds of approval, posting it and finding the pictures, and doing the access information. At some point — it made money from the very beginning. “Okay, so I’m going to hire editors to do this.” I was overseeing a publisher, but they were doing the work. That’s the other thing that I have learned to do, is to hire out. That’s the one thing I wish I’d learned earlier in life, to hire people better than yourself as a way of extending your reach. Cool Tools — Marcus is running that, basically. Silver Cord — my partner in that is running that. I don’t have a partner yet in True Films, but Claudia — who is here — is helping me now. That’s the idea. The way that I found to leverage my ideas and perspective is to hire whenever I can. The Cool Tools Kevin Kelly Uses to Get Words on the Page Kelton Reid: That’s cool. For scaling and probably peace of mind too. To harness your skills and your creativity. Speaking of Cool Tools, let’s talk a little bit about the Cool Tools that you use to actually get words onto the page, if you don’t mind. I’d love to know. I know you’ve got some organizational hacks in place, it sounds like, but are you a Mac guy or are you a PC guy? When you’re actually sitting down to get words onto the page, what are you using there? Kevin Kelly: There’s a joke. I’ll actually just show you a picture of my — I have a beige, boring minivan, but the back window is covered with little white apples, like a million of them. I have been an Apple user from the Apple 2e. We did a famous Wired cover about praying for Apple because there was a brief spell before Jobs came back that I thought I was going to have to actually make the big switch to Windows. I was within two months of doing that, but he came back in time and saved the day. Yeah, I’m a total Mac — we’re a Mac household. I have an iPhone. I work on a Mac — they call it a Mac Tower. It’s a behemoth machine that sits below me. I have two cinema screens: one at sitting height and one at standing height. I can just toggle between them. I have a little, tiny, 11-inch Mac Air that I take with me when I travel. It’s big enough just to do e-mail and primitive web. I have my PowerPoint speeches mounted, and that’s it. I’m not a very mobile person, the first smart phone I had was Apple 6. I’m old-school in that sense. E-mail’s the best way to reach me. I work on a desktop. I’m not mobile. When I take pictures I have to process them. I use Lightroom, which I think is fantastic. I don’t even need Photoshop. I just use Lightroom for managing my gazillion … By the way, I have them all backed up to not only Google, but I’m a insane, radical, extreme backer-upper. My photos are backed up on three clouds and three different hard disks beyond the cards that I have. I also have them backed up in three different places while I travel. Needless to say, I have never lost an image. Kelton Reid: Is that known as RAID? Kevin Kelly: Yeah, exactly. I have my own version of RAID. Right, exactly. The tools I use for writing — eventually I get into Microsoft Word. I don’t always start there. Believe it or not, I sometimes start writing in my e-mail because it’s so simple and I’m not going to lose it. I can keep it up. I used to mail it to myself as a backup. That was long before I had Time Machine. Sometimes the first notes will be in all kinds of things. Sometimes it’ll be in Google Docs. Sometimes it’ll be in my e-mail. Sometimes it’ll be in Notes. Eventually it gets to Microsoft. When I’m writing a bigger piece I actually will move things, at some point, into Scrivener. Scrivener is this really cool software that’s used by people doing long-form writing, whether it be fiction or nonfiction, or sometimes screenplays. It’s a card-based organizing metaphor, so things have cards and you can move these cards around. The cards can have an indefinite amount of text in them, and you can put them in hierarchies or you can keep them flat, but the idea is that you can move all this stuff around. It takes the place of the old way where we actually did cut and paste. Had things in piles and moved piles around on the floor, or index cards on your desktop. It does that. And it’s really good for organizing lots of things in lots of parts. I’ve used that for the last two books, and I would definitely use it again for any other book I did. I think that’s on both Mac and Windows. I’m using Scrivener, but at some point it’ll make its way into a Word doc in the final form. That’s just because, in my experience working with magazines and book publishers, this is the universal format. It just has to reach there at some point. Kelton Reid: The track changes and traditional publishing. Kevin Kelly: Yeah, exactly. Kelton Reid: I skipped over a big one, but here is one for you. You probably are rubbing elbows with writers — and you have been for much of your career — do you believe in writer’s block? Kevin Kelly: I don’t. If you mean do I experience writer blocks, that’s all I can say. I’ve never really talked to the other writers about writer’s block, so I can’t say whether they have it or not. I have never had them volunteer conversation about it. I was just hanging out last week with all these science fiction authors — very published successes — and this never came up. I have not experienced it myself. In talking to them about their work habits and stuff, some of them have pretty regular, “write every day” kind of things where they’ll write about something every day. Maybe it’s not about what their book is, but they’ll do something. It has not been an issue in my experience. Kelton Reid: Cool. That’s good. Knock on wood. Kevin Kelly: Yeah. A Futurist’s Expansive Definition of Creativity Kelton Reid: All right. Let’s get into creativity a little bit. I know we’ve got a few more minutes here. I think creativity is probably inherent to a lot of what you do, but it might not be labeled as creativity when you’re getting into technology and looking to the future. Do you think that you could define creativity for us? Kevin Kelly: My image of creativity is a diagram in a book called The Act of Creation by Koestler. It’s an old book. It was his attempt to try and figure out what creativity is. His diagram was very simple: take two index cards that are inserted into each other so they form — from the end — a profile of a cross. So there are two planes that are intersecting, you have a flat plane and a vertical plane. You have two planes that are intersecting. His idea was that all creativity is basically taking two unrelated planes and making them intersect. That’s the visual image that I have of creativity, which is you are making a connection, an intersection between things that have not intersected before. Jokes are kind of like that. A joke is when you take two things that don’t seem to be related and you bring them together in some way that’s plausible and it’s funny. New ideas, new innovations are the same kind of thing where you recombine existing mechanisms in a way that haven’t been combined before. Brian Arthur’s and Paul Romer — two separate guys with two separate theories, but they’re both the same, which is that the fountain of all innovation is just a recombination. In fact, the origin of all wealth is actually recombination. You’re just recombining things. This idea of intersecting things that had not intersected before is my definition of creativity. There are, of course, rules. You can’t just take any random thing, the new intersection has to work in some way. It has to be plausible, interesting, whatever — but fundamentally, that’s the act. When I see something creative, it’s usually because someone has — we talked about the other metaphor of a leap somewhere. They have stepped off something and they’re stepping somewhere else, but there are actually two legs. They actually have a leg in the departure point and a leg in the arrival point. Those two things have not been bridged before. That’s my image of an intersection of two unrelated ideas. Kelton Reid: I like it. I like it a lot. I think that we’re getting close here. I have a couple of other questions for you, but — Kevin Kelly: Let me just say one thing about the creativity. Kelton Reid: Oh, I’m sorry. How Lateral Thinking Can Improve Your Writing Kevin Kelly: No, because I’ve gotten to work with many of what I would consider some of the most creative people working today, alive today. People who are technically geniuses like Danny Hillis, artistically genius like Brian Eno, and cultural genius like Stewart Brand. It’s really been interesting to watch them operate. I think they have trained their minds to do this. They’re doing the thing I’m saying with these unrelated planes intersecting, but they do them in different ways. Brian Eno, he’s the most lateral thinker I know. Lateral meaning that he’s associating ideas coming from off to the side. We have a tendency to proceed in a linear way, or a way in which there’s the obvious things in front of you that you may want to combine. He has an ability to reach off to the side into something that is unexpected, trying to make that association that will work. He’s particularly good at reaching behind his back or off to the side — that’s what I meant by laterally — to bring something in. That ability to, in some senses, dismiss or ignore the obvious ones and to reach for the unobvious but yet still works, is something that I think actually they train. Brian Eno has a famous set of cards called Oblique Strategies that he and a partner use to make music. These were prompts that they would pick up at random to force themselves to do this lateral thinking. They were prompts like, “Take the most obvious thing and ignore it,” or “What about the middle? Emphasize the middle.” They were almost random things. Often, that action would not be the thing that worked, but that would lead them to this other unobvious next step that would work. That’s one way. Those cards are actually very valuable and useful for anything. I have a deck right here. I have my own internal ones of when you’re in a situation — say when you’re stuck, you use these things as prompts, exercises to force yourself to think about these other approaches. It’s very handy. I think, internally, that’s what Brian and other are doing, is actually have a set of little things that they’re running through, sometimes unconsciously, as they try and prompt themselves to take this lateral approach. Then there are others like Marvin Minsky and Danny Hillis who are very technical. I think they do something very similar, particularly Marvin, which is pretend that they’re not human. They try to approach this as if they were seeing it for the first time, as if they were coming from another planet, as if they were pretending they were, often, a robot. “How would a robot do this?” To try and do the same thing of looking at it with fresh eyes, looking at it in a way that no ordinary human would look at it, not as a way an ordinary human would look at it. Then Stuart Brand, who also has this ability, I think his little heuristic that he also trained himself to do was to force himself — each time he approached something he would force himself to try and find a different perspective on it, including using the words that he used to describe something. He would never, ever repeat himself. If he was talking about something he knew, he would require that he use different words when talking about it this time to this person, even though he’d been talking about it for a thousand times before. That constraint would require him — because of the new words — to see it differently. Then he would have an insight just because he forced himself to use different words. Those are some of the ways that I’ve seen some of the most creative people I know use this on a daily basis. They have trained themselves to be better at this on an ongoing basis — not just when they’re sitting down, but as a habit. Kelton Reid: For sure. Yeah, I know screenwriter John August has a similar set of prompts like the Oblique Strategies that he uses for screenwriters which has proven to be very helpful. I think writers can use that in whatever way they think to kick-start their writing for sure. Side note, I love Brian Eno’s Music for Airports. I actually listen to it while I’m writing. I find that it helps because it’s kind of meandering and ambient, of course. I’ve got to slip this one in here. I know that in The Inevitable and Understanding the Technological Forces That Will Shape Our World, you’ve talked about VR quite a bit. I heard you say you were reading Ready Player One, which is Ernie Cline’s journey into VR. What is it? The OASIS? Kevin Kelly: Correct. Kelton Reid: Interesting intersection there. I think you’ve worked with Steven Spielberg in the past, and he is adapting that book into a movie. Have you heard anything about that? Kevin Kelly: I have not heard — either from Ernie or elsewhere — about what state the Spielberg Ready Player One is in. I’ve heard different rumors about whether it’s actually going to be in VR or not. I think there is likely to be some VR component, probably a VR game version. But no, I don’t know anything more about it other than what has been published. I think that it’s an ideal Spielberg movie for many reasons, not the least of all the references to the seventies and eighties that I’m sure he’d be very good at. Kelton Reid: Right. I thought it was interesting that it takes place in 2044 and he actually tapped you to help him predict 2054 in Minority Report. Why Steven Spielberg Asked Mr. Kelly to Predict the Future Kevin Kelly: Right, yeah. Kelton Reid: I thought maybe he had tapped you again. Kevin Kelly: No. It was just not me, it was a group of us, and as far as I know he hasn’t reached out in that sense to do that — which was a very amazing experience. There was a set of people, including the people I just mentioned, except I don’t think Brian was there. Doug Copeland and some other — Jaron Lanier — were present, and our job was to make this world comprehensive. It was really interesting because we did a lot of arm waving about these things. Spielberg is sitting in the room and he’s there with his little pencil and pad. He says, “Okay, what are people sleeping on? What do the beds look like? How about for breakfast, what are people having for breakfast?” That requirement to be that specific was very galvanizing because you couldn’t just talk about general things. He wanted to know what the beds looked like. So you began to think, “What do they look like? Are they any different? The same? Are they waterbeds?” That was so profound for me, because that really changed how I try to think about the future now. Kelton Reid: How cool. I really appreciate you taking time out to chat with us about your process. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our World, a very optimistic roadmap of the future. Really cool stuff. It’s out now and we can find it out there. You link to it at kk.org and it’s on Amazon. I’ll link to your Google Plus Page as well and your Twitter handle. Is there any other sign-offs for writers you want to drop on us before you go to the next interview? Kevin Kelly: No, other than I do suggest that you look at the Cool Tools book that I did, which was self published. It’s this huge, oversized, thick, heavy, five pound, massive catalog of possibilities. There are some good writer tools besides Scrivener. There are some other resources for people making things and being creative — tools not just like the wrenches and pipes, but things like Elance, or what they would call Upwork these days. How to hire someone for help. Where to get a logo or book cover done. Check out that, that’s available on Amazon as well. Kelton Reid: Mr. Kelly, thank you so much. We really appreciate it. Best of luck with all of your press rounds, and hopefully you’ll come back and talk to us again another time. Kevin Kelly: Sure thing. Thanks for the attention. Appreciate it. Kelton Reid: Thank you. Thanks so much for joining me for this half of A Tour Through The Writer’s Process. If you enjoy The Writer Files Podcast, please subscribe to the show and leave us a rating or a review on iTunes to help other writers find us. For more episodes or to just leave a comment or a question, drop by WriterFiles.FM. You can always chat with me on Twitter @KeltonReid. Cheers. Talk to you next week.

New York Times bestselling author Austin Kleon has been called one of the most interesting people on the Internet by The Atlantic Magazine, and he stopped by The Writer Files to chat with me about creativity and the writing life.   Rainmaker.FM is Brought to You By   Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting. Start getting more from your site today! Austin is the author of three illustrated books — Steal Like An Artist, Newspaper Blackout, and Show Your Work! — guides I recommend to all writers seeking insights for tapping into your endless reserves of creativity and innovation. In addition to being featured on NPR s Morning Edition, PBS Newshour, and The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Kleon speaks about creativity in the digital age for organizations as varied as Pixar, Google, SXSW, TEDx, and The Economist. In the first part of this two-part file, Austin Kleon and I discuss: Why You Should Read More Than You Write How a Paper Dictionary Can Improve Your Writing The Difference Between Little Writing and Big Writing Why You Should Research Out in the Open How Your Daily Ritual Can Save You from Failure 3 Symptoms of Writer’s Block and How to Cure Them Why You Should Print Your Work and Read It Aloud How to Harness the Power of Productive Procrastination Listen to The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes How Bestselling Author Austin Kleon Writes: Part Two Here s How Austin Kleon Writes AustinKleon.com Clive Thompson, The Pencil and the Keyboard: How The Way You Write Changes the Way You Think Elizabeth Gilbert: “Your elusive creative genius” Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey Austin Kleon on Instagram Austin Kleon on Twitter Kelton Reid on Twitter The Transcript How Bestselling Author Austin Kleon Writes, Part One Voiceover: This is Rainmaker.FM, the digital marketing podcast network. It’s built on the Rainmaker Platform, which empowers you to build your own digital marketing and sales platform. Start your free 14-day trial at RainmakerPlatform.com. Kelton Reid: These are The Writer Files, a tour of the habits, habitats, and brains of working writers, from online content creators to fictionist, journalists, entrepreneurs, and beyond. I’m your host Kelton Reid: writer, podcaster, and mediaphile. Each week, we’ll find out how great writers keep the ink flowing, the cursor moving, and avoid writer’s block. New York Times bestselling author Austin Kleon has been called one of the most interesting people on the Internet by the Atlantic magazine, and he stopped by The Writer Files to chat with me about creativity and the writing life. Austin is the author of three illustrated books: Steal Like An Artist, Newspaper Blackout, and Show Your Work!. In addition to being featured on MPR’s Morning Edition, PBS NewsHour, and The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Kleon speaks about creativity in the digital age — organizations as varied as Pixar, Google, South by Southwest, TEDx, and The Economist. In the first part of this two-part file, Austin Kleon and I discuss why you should read more than you write, how a paper dictionary can improve your writing, the difference between little writing and big writing, how your daily ritual can save you from failure, three symptoms of writer’s block and how to cure them, and how to harness the power of productive procrastination. Austin Kleon, welcome back to The Writer Files. Austin Kleon: Thanks for having me. Kelton Reid: You were in the written series, and I’ll point to that in the show notes. That was a really very inspiring interview Q&A. Geez, we’re off to a great start. Thanks for coming back, man. I can’t wait to pick your brain and get into your updated Writer File here. Austin Kleon: I’m stoked. Kelton Reid: For listeners who aren’t familiar with your work, who are you, and what is your area of expertise as a writer? Austin Kleon: I call myself ‘a writer who draws,’ which means that I make art with words and books with pictures. I’ve put out three books. They’re all illustrated books. The one I’m known best for is a book called Steal Like An Artist, which is a list of 10 things I wish I’d known about being creative when I first started out. The other book I’m more well-known for is the sequel to Steal Like An Artist called Show Your Work!, which is a book about self-promotion for people who hate the very idea of self-promotion. It’s all about sharing your work and getting yourself out there. Steal is all about taking influence from others, and Show Your Work! is about influencing others by letting them steal from you in a sense. Before those two books, I did a book called Newspaper Blackout, which is a very strange poetry book — that’s why no one knows about it, it’s a poetry book. It’s made from newspaper articles, and it looks like the CIA did haiku. I pick a few words out of a newspaper article. Then I blackout the rest, and they read like these weird haikus almost. That was my first book. If there was a Venn diagram of my work, I think about it as pictures, words, and the web, and I’m in the middle. The web part is that my whole career has been based on me being active online. I’m actually coming up on my blog’s about 10 years old. When I got out of college, I really didn’t know what I was doing, so I started a blog. In 2005, that was a great idea. It was pretty easy to get started and stand out, especially if you were doing something interesting. I guess less and less I think of myself as a web guy and more of just an author, which is a very strange transition. I had day jobs for a long time, and now I just do this full time. Kelton Reid: You came from a background of graphic design as well. Austin Kleon: Yeah, that’s the weird thing about me. I identify mostly as a writer in terms of where I feel centered in the world, but I have this visual side, this design and art side. I made a living for several years as a web designer. I’m not formally trained in graphic design or art, but that’s always just been part of my life. Kelton Reid: I love those blackout poems. They are very cool. Austin Kleon: Thanks. Kelton Reid: I keep your books by my desk just as inspiration because I feel like I can just flip open Steal Like An Artist anytime I’m feeling I need creative juice. There’s just so much in there. It’s perfect for those moments when you just need a jolt of quick, creative inspiration, so thank you for those. Austin Kleon: I’m glad to hear that. They’re designed that way. You’re supposed to be able to just flip them open and start reading and get something out of it. A lot of people have them as ebooks, but they really shine as print books. Kelton Reid: I agree. The ebook would not do it justice. I think having it in your hands and being able to touch it, and the artwork, is really great. It’s really, really fun. Where can we find your writing out there in the world? Austin Kleon: The best thing to do is to go to your local bookstore and ask for one of my books. That’s the easiest. Otherwise, just go to AustinKleon.com or Google me, and you’ll drop down the rabbit hole of my stuff. Kelton Reid: Yeah, totally. Austin Kleon: I’m a Twitter junky and an Instagram guy, too, so I’m AustinKleon on those. Kelton Reid: Cool. What are you presently working on over there? Austin Kleon: I just finished up something I was not excited about when I started, and now I’m super excited about it. My publisher, Workman, wanted to turn Steal Like An Artist into a journal. It’s really cool. It’s got one of those elastic bands and the envelope in the back, so it’s basically a prompted journal. It’s like an interactive version of Steal Like An Artist that you can carry around and do all kinds of exercises. It’s supposed to be something that you carry around with you and you open up every day. It gets your juices flowing. I just finished that up. That’s coming out in October, and I’m going on a 12-city tour. I don’t have all the cities quite yet. Book tour for me is like I have to get stoked up for because it’s a marathon-type thing, but I’m super excited about the journal. Like I said, I’m so particular about my own journals that the idea of making a journal that other people would use was daunting, but then it turned into this really fun thing. I’m looking forward to doing the exercises myself, along with everybody else. Kelton Reid: I can’t wait to get a hold of one of those. Austin Kleon: I will send you a copy. Kelton Reid: Cool. That’s the best news ever. I’d like to dig into your productivity a little bit and just pick your brain. Austin Kleon: Sure. Kelton Reid: I know that you do some pretty extensive research on stuff. How much time per day would you say you’re just researching for creative inspiration? Why You Should Read More Than You Write Austin Kleon: If I had to put an hour, I’d say anywhere from one hour a day to five hours a day. It so depends on what project I’m working on or not, but for me, I probably read at least three to four times as much as write. That’s a really important thing for my own practice. I know folks like Stephen King, he writes in the morning, and then he reads all afternoon. I’ve always aspired to that. I’ve never really got that done because I like to read and then putter around. If I’m on deadline, I’ll have to sit down and actually bang something out, but I would say probably at least a third to half of the day is based on trying to fill the tanks, so to speak. Kelton Reid: Before you actually sit down and get working, do you have any pre-game ritual or practices that you do? Austin Kleon: I wish I had more. For me, the hardest thing is to get my butt in the chair and sit down and open the file and go for it. I do a lot of free writing by hand. I take a lot of notes by hand, and I really believe in keeping a journal and that kind of thing. But when I’m actually sitting down to make a piece of writing that someone else is going to read, I feel like I have to be in front of the computer. My friend Clive Thompson, if you Google Clive Thompson or search Clive Thompson on my tumblr, there’s a brilliant talk he gave about writing by hand versus typing on the computer. The research he found showed us that writing by hand is great for taking notes and for synthesizing ideas and coming up with new ideas, but when it comes to actually producing writing for a reader, typing on the computer or on a typewriter is better. That’s certainly true on my own practice. It feels like I’m not actually really writing until I’m hitting the keys. Kelton Reid: I love that research — and I’ve always been fascinated. I know you talk about that quite a bit — that synthesis and then the formality, or at least the ritual of actually getting it down. Do you have a most productive time of day or a place where you are most productive for your writing process? Austin Kleon: I have converted my garage into my studio, so I have what I call ‘the 8-foot commute’ from my backdoor of my house to the garage. You know that Weezer song? “In the garage, I feel safe.” That’s what happens. I go in. I flip on the lights. I crank the air conditioner, the window AC. I say hi to my lizard that likes to hang out on my air conditioner. He’s right there right now, actually. There’s something about the actual physical transition between going out the house, being out in the heat, and then coming into the garage, flipping on the lights, that gets me in the mode. I should probably mention that I have a weird setup. Last time we talked, I had two desks. Now, I actually have three desks. Kelton Reid: They’re multiplying? Austin Kleon: It’s getting a little out of control. I have one desk that’s the analog desk, and I talked about this in Steal Like An Artist. The analog desk, nothing electronic is allowed on there other than pencil sharpener. That’s for where I make my newspaper blackout poems and where I come up with ideas and letter stuff and that kind of thing. Then I have a digital desk, which is where I have my computer and my scanner and all that stuff. That’s where, like we said before, the real writing happens. How a Paper Dictionary Can Improve Your Writing Austin Kleon: Now I have another desk that’s more like a standing desk, which is my attempt to recreate a library carrel at the library. It’s got a bunch of reference stuff on it. I’ve got all my files above, so I file stuff. Then I have an actual paper dictionary there that’s this big honkin’ American Heritage. I go over there, and I look up words. I really recommend to folks use the dictionary and get a paper one. The dictionary on the Mac is pretty good, but a paper dictionary, there’s something about having to turn to the page and read the entry. Then you see all the words around the entry. You always find something interesting. That’s something I stole from John McPhee, the writer. He did this brilliant series of articles for The New Yorker about how he writes, and his big advice is never use a thesaurus. Never use a thesaurus. Always use a dictionary. Look up a word in the dictionary, and it’ll give you ideas for better phrases to use and that kind of stuff — so, yeah, three desks: analog desk, digital desk, and then my reference desk. I just dance between the three all day. I hate standing. I know there’s a big vogue right now for standing desks. I hate standing desks so much. I cannot write when I’m standing up. Part of the fun for me of being a writer is leaning back in my chair and staring out the window and then typing and then looking at the squirrel out my window, this lizard. That’s the fun for me, and I have a really nice office chair. That, for me, is the good stuff. Death to standing desks. Kelton Reid: It’s interesting you say that because I use my standing desk mostly just for correspondence stuff or when I’m just surfing Twitter or whatever. I can’t write at the standing desk, anything of any import. Austin Kleon: What you just said, that’s what happened to me. I have my computer on the standing desk, and I just found myself always walking over there and answering an email, blah, blah, blah, and doing that little light work. Then I never really was able to just zoom in and do stuff. Kelton Reid: Yeah, I’m with you. Are you a night owl, or do you get out there? Austin Kleon: I’m sorry. I didn’t even answer your question. Kelton Reid: That’s okay. Austin Kleon: I really like to work when the world is sleeping. I love early morning, and I love late nights. The problem with that is I have two kids. I really love to sleep, and that’s the only time they’re asleep. I cannot make myself get up that early anymore. I’m really lucky my wife stays home with the kids. It’s amazing that we’re able to do that. It’s also kind of insane, or drives my wife insane, but I basically keep 10 to 5 hours. It’s like working in an agency or something. It’s like 10 to 5, so I’m doomed to the afternoon, which Dickens called ‘Mongrel time’ — it’s neither day nor night. I hate the afternoon, but there’s something about being in the garage in the afternoon and losing track of what time it is that kind of helps — so afternoons for me. I hope, eventually, that I can just get up in the morning and write 1500 words at 5 am, but I just can’t do it yet. Kelton Reid: Are you cranking music in the garage, or do you prefer silence? Austin Kleon: It just depends on what I’m trying to do. If I’m researching and reading and just messing around or blogging, I’ll just listen to soul music or garage rock, just the stuff I like. If I’m really trying to come up with ideas and really write something, I’ll either put earplugs in — I know Dan Pink writes with earplugs. There’s something about having complete silence. You can hear your blood pumping. I love that. I also like music I can ignore, so I put on classical or jazz or Brian Eno or something like that. Then if I’m on deadline, if I’m doing something I hate that I know I have to finish, I will play the most meatheaded, loud stuff I can, like Soundgarden, ACDC, or Led Zeppelin, just the most meatheaded rock I can possibly muster. I’ll turn that up as loud as I dare, and I’ll just crank through. It’s almost like a punishment — it’s not funny but at Guantanamo, I think they play Metallica when they’re torturing people — and that’s kind of how I feel. It’s like, “Let’s play this metal music and torture yourself until you’re done.” The gun to your back, so to speak. That’s a horrible metaphor, but that’s kind of how it works. Kelton Reid: Hook up the electrodes. Austin Kleon: Yeah. Kelton Reid: You’re just an incredibly prolific online publisher by your blog, so when you’re working on a book at the same time, are you alternating between things, or are you getting out there every day and just cycling between stuff? The Difference Between Little Writing and Big Writing Austin Kleon: I try to post a few things every day. If you do that, it just seems like a lot. When I’m really working on a book, I’m pretty heads down on the book, and you’ll see the online stuff slow down. The one thing I want to make a point about is I just don’t really see a big difference, particularly with my process, between what we call ‘little writing’ and ‘big writing.’ Whether you’re making a Tweet, or you’re tumbling something or writing a blog post, or you’re writing a book, to me, it’s all typing in the boxes. I’ve had Tweets that led to blog posts that led to book chapters, you know what I mean? It’s all just kind of this stew. Why You Should Research Out in the Open Austin Kleon: The one thing that you can do — if you’re insane and you have too much time on your hands — is you can watch me. I’m researching in the open. You can see what I’m interested in, and you can get an idea of where I’m going without me telling you. That’s the ‘show your work’ thing is that I’ve been really interested in letting people watch me as I go, and then what happens is that all these stuff comes back at me. I’ll Tweet out something, and then somebody else will say, “Oh, well, have you read this?” I say “No,” and I look that up. It’s this cycle between publishing and receiving. It is, it’s a cycle. I know a lot of writers do it differently, but I like researching out in the open and letting people help me along. A lot of my books could probably be reconstructed from my online output, but in that nice little package. You pick up the book, it’s all there. It’s all been edited. It’s all trying to make this coherent argument, and it’s just not the same. I just like that — researching out in the open. Then eventually you get a book at the end of it. Kelton Reid: Just a quick pause to mention that The Writer Files is brought to you by the Rainmaker Platform, the complete website solution for content marketers and online entrepreneurs. Find out more and take a free 14-day test drive at Rainmaker.FM/Platform. I love how you talk about creativity not being linear and the importance of the daily practice. You are practicing what you preach, but it’s cool. How Your Daily Ritual Can Save You from Failure Austin Kleon: It’s the only way I can see … when you’re young-er, because I’m not that old yet, but when you’re younger, you just think, “I’ll just arrive at some point. I’ll get to this point, and people will notice me, they’ll know me, and I can just sit back.” If you’re lucky enough to have a little bit of success when you’re younger like I did, it scares the crap out of you. You realize suddenly, “Oh, I’ve been talking a big talk about how I want to be a writer and how I want to be an artist and all that stuff, and now it could actually happen. I might have to do this the rest of my life.” Elizabeth Gilbert, I’ve never read any of her books. I love her. She’s done a beautiful profile of Tom Waits, and I’ve read a little bit of her non-fiction. She did this TED talk where, after Eat, Pray, Love came out, she said, “I probably have 40 years of work left, and it’s very possible that my biggest success is behind me.” Kelton Reid: I love that TED talk. I’ll link to it, but it’s so good. Austin Kleon: It’s so good, and it was so honest of her to get up there and be like, “I know. I know I was lucky. I know this might never happen again, but I have to keep going.” It’s funny because I think her next book actually wasn’t a very big success, and then she gave another TED talk, because she’s Elizabeth Gilbert, and talked about failure. For me, I just put this post up online recently. It was a little talk I gave about how everybody thinks creativity is like Don Draper closing his eyes and then having a big revelation. I never feel like Don Draper. I always feel like Phil Connors in Groundhog Day. Phil wakes up every day at 6 am, and he’s got to do something with his day. He knows there’s no tomorrow. He knows all he’s got is this day. I love that movie because, at first, he cheats, he fritters away the day, and then he falls into despair. Then, at the end, he realizes, “I just have to work. I have to practice a craft, or I just put the work in every day,” and that’s when his life gets better. As an artist or a writer, you really just have to get in to the dailyness. You have to figure out a daily routine in which you go out and you do your work, and then, if you have a daily practice and a ritual, you’re insulated from success and failure because they’ll both screw you up. Failure, we all know about. Success will do the same thing. It will knock you off your game, but if you have this dailyness to your work, that will pull you through so many situations. That’s why I love Mason Currey’s book Daily Rituals. Kelton Reid: Me too. That’s a good one. Austin Kleon: That’s like writer porn, right? You open it up, and it’s like, “Ooh.” The thing I really liked about that book is my books are prescriptive — I’m telling you what to do, like do this, do that. It’s bossy, and that has its place — but I like Mason’s book, Daily Rituals, because it’s just this big collage of what other people have done before you. Then it’s your job to pick and choose from what you want. But you get the sense when you read that book, it’s like, “You got to go in and make the doughnuts, every day.” You know what I mean? “You got to go in to the garage and make something happen, and it’s going to be the same tomorrow and the day after that, until you die.” If that seems daunting, you’re in the wrong work. Kelton Reid: That’s why I love Show Your Work!, where you’re talking about the incremental process. One of my favorite quotes, I don’t know if it’s from that book in particular, but where you say, “Writers aren’t born. They are made.” Austin Kleon: That’s something I have to believe for myself because I’m not superhumanly talented. I’ve got a decent amount of talent, but I’m not like James Brown. I’m not Miles Davis. But the funny thing, I just mentioned James Brown — there’s a great documentary about him out right now called Mr. Dynamite — and the thing about James Brown is you just realize this is a guy worked every day. He just never stopped. You’ll find that with all these geniuses. Not only were they superhumanly talented, they also worked all the time. I’m a lazy person. I always think of myself as a lazy person. I don’t like to work, but I know that if I don’t, I will do nothing. I had a really good creative writing professor named Steven Bauer, and his thing was, “Apply ass to chair.” “Apply ass to chair.” He’s like, “Write it on an index card and put it above your desk — apply ass to chair.” He was like the Allen thing. You just show up. If you show up every day and you do the work, those little bits and pieces of effort, over time, they add up into something. You write a page a day, it doesn’t seem like much in the day, and then at the end of the year, you got enough for a novel, 305 pages. Kelton Reid: Just veer from the script for a minute — do you feel like that transparency, where you’re giving your audience a window into your creative process, that has almost a psychological effect on you? Why Sharing Is the Most Powerful Thing You Can Do as a Writer Austin Kleon: It does, and you have to be careful with it. One thing I didn’t touch on, Show Your Work!’s supposed to be a pep talk. It’s supposed to push people who are afraid to open up a little bit — just try one little thing every day, but the thing about being transparent is you have to really gauge what and how and how much you show. You have to really look at your process and what’s really close to you that you can’t share. Then you have to think about what you can. The point I want to make with that is that I think people get this idea that I’m like, “Yeah, sure, everything dude. Put your novel on GitHub.” That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying find the little bits and pieces of your process that you think might be interesting or helpful to someone else, and push out those little bits and pieces as you’re working on something. In that way, you are around, first of all. People don’t forget about you. Then you’re able to keep your head down and do your work while you’re just sending out these little transmissions. That was really the idea behind Show Your Work!. When I’m really working on something that’s really important to me, like I didn’t share the journal when I was working on it. I knew I had two months to finish it before my son was born. I could not conceive of any way in which me sharing my work would benefit me in any sense, but the things I was sharing were like I was looking at other people’s notebooks, and I was Tweeting and tumbling out that stuff. Novelists will come to me, or fiction writers, they’re like, “Should I put drafts of my stories online?” I’m like “No. Don’t put drafts of your stories online. Save your drafts for your really close readers and for your writing group or your wife or whoever. What you should be doing is write about the books you’re reading, talk about a writing tool that you found really helpful, or talk about structure in a Hemingway story you’re reading.” Do that kind of stuff, that process-y stuff that you think no one cares about. Every fiction writer should be posting a list of books they’re reading. That’s the easiest thing in the world to do. From a marketing perspective, throw an associate’s code in there, and anyone who buys the book, get something back from it. I’m always amazed at writers who don’t tell people what they’re reading. I think a lot of people think that reading’s a personal thing. The reason people read you is that they’re hungry for the types of books you write, so if you read those types of books, too … The interesting thing about my genre is that I think a lot of people think I sit around and read creativity books all the time, which is not true. The reason that my books are interesting is because I read all kinds of different books. This has always been a personal thing for me. I have always felt like if I was true to the things I was really interested in and sharing the things I was really interested in, people would follow along just because, in the act of sharing things, that’s how I can either find my people or I can introduce people to new stuff. I don’t really like the word ‘curator,’ but I like sharing. In this day and age, one of the most powerful things you can do as a writer is to share stuff. Kelton Reid: Definitely. I love that. All right. Let’s just wrap up productivity with the writer’s block question. Do you buy in to it? Do you ever get it? 3 Symptoms of Writer s Block and How to Cure Them Austin Kleon: I feel like writer’s block is just exhaustion, laziness, or fear — or some combination of them. A lot of times when I’m blocked, it’s just that I don’t want to sit down and write. I just don’t want to because it’s just not my favorite thing to do. I would rather read. Fran Lebowitz, she’s like, “If you ever feel like writing, just lay down on the couch and read a bit. It will pass.” That’s how I feel. I also think that people hit walls, and a lot of times when nothing’s coming, when the output doesn’t happen, that’s because there’s problems of input. A lot of times problems of output are problems of input. If you don’t have anything coming out, that means there’s not good stuff going in. That could be anything from you need to take a trip, or you need to just walk away from your desk, or you need to stare at a wall for a while or read — just something to get something jump-started. A lot of times with block, some people try to power through a block, and I’m just like, eh, walk away for a bit. Everybody’s had that experience — you’re in the shower, you’re on a walk, and that’s when the juices start flowing. With that said, you need a time and place every day to do the work. Kelton Reid: Yeah, I like how you talk about the bliss station. You’ve been known to mention it. Austin Kleon: That’s a Joseph Campbell thing. Everybody’s heard the ‘follow your bliss’ thing from Joseph Campbell, but the one thing Joseph Campbell talked about in that, too, was having a bliss station, having a place where you can go, and no one’s going to bother you, and you feel very much at home, and you can do your work without the world impinging on it. For me, that’s the garage. Kelton Reid: What about workflow there in the garage? I know you did mention that you’re working on a Mac. What particular hardware are you presently working on? Why You Should Print Your Work and Read It Aloud Austin Kleon: I have two computers. I splurged and bought myself a big iMac. I write on that in the garage. I also have a 13-inch Macbook Air, which I think is probably one of the greatest laptops ever made. I had a 12-inch PowerBook in the early aughts that was wonderful, but this one, it’s about the same form factor actually. The Mac Air is such a fun computer to travel with and write on, but I don’t use anything fancy. It’s just off-the-shelf Macs. I write Google Docs, or sometimes I use Word. A lot of times now, I just type into a text file that’s getting saved to Dropbox. Dropbox is probably the one piece of software I couldn’t live without these days because it keeps everything. I even look at stuff on my phone. Macs with Dropbox on it, pretty much, you could do whatever you want. I just think so many of the writing programs, they’re just everything else. They’re just way too complicated. Just open a box and type in to it. That’s why I love TextEdit on the Mac. I just open that up, make the font really big, and start typing. Kelton Reid: That’s cool. Austin Kleon: I would like to see a series in which people actually talk about their nuts and bolts of what’s on their screen when they’re writing. I’ve noticed that, if I’m just trying to free write, if you make the font super, super big so you can’t see any of the other words, that’s a great mental tool to use on the word processor. But then if you’re editing, it’s really important to be able to see paragraphs and the shape of writing, so use the zoom tool, too. That’s a very underrated tool. Of course, the other thing I think is super important is you have to print your work out, look at it on a piece of paper, and edit it with pen. I also think everyone should read their writing aloud. Kelton Reid: I love both of those methods, honestly. Austin Kleon: Both of which are going out of fashion because everyone’s like, “Oh, paperless,” and it’s like “No.” And everyone works in an open office now, so it’s like you’re going to feel like a moron if you read your writing out loud. Those two hacks — printing stuff out, editing by hand, and reading aloud — are super easy ways to improve your writing. Kelton Reid: Love that. Do you have any methods of madness for staying organized over there? How to Personalize Your Organization Process Austin Kleon: I love Dropbox, like I said. Dropbox and really having a folder system in Dropbox helps. I just write stuff. I’m going to sound such a goof. I have three notebooks going all the time. One of them is a pocket notebook which I write down to-do lists and stupid ideas that I’m having and stuff like that. That just stays in my pocket. I have a sketchbook that I keep in the house and in the studio where I’ll collage stuff in there and then I’ll draw and that kind of thing. Then I have another notebook, what I call my logbook. It’s a 365-day moleskin diary, and every day at the end of the day, I write down — I don’t talk about my feelings or anything like that — I simply list what I did all day. Like “Went here for lunch,” “Went in and got my TSA pre-check application,” “Took the dog for a walk” — dumb stuff like that. I just list things, or what I was reading, or what I watched on TV. One of the things I’ve noticed — because it’s so hard to keep a diary — but if you just simply list, start to finish, the things you did every day in the list, when you’re flipping back through that, it recalls the whole day for you. You can remember how you were feeling. I have a terrible memory, so I love being able to go back. I have seven years of logbooks now, so I love being able to say “When did I replace the air filter in the attic?” I can go back six months and find it, or “When’s the last time I got a haircut?” That was really practical, but I can also say “Hey, how did I write the last book?” I’ll flip in to my logbook, and I’ll be like “Oh, well, here was a day where I did 4,500 words,” and “Here’s a day where I did nothing,” and “Here’s a day where I said I was going to give up and give the advance back.” You know what I mean? I have such a terrible memory that I just forget what it’s like to be in these projects. Having these books that I can flip back through, even with my kids, it was very helpful for me to look back on how I felt after two months of having my first kid. I was like “Oh, this existential dread and angst, this is how I felt last time, and it got better.” I think keeping a record of your day is something that a writer, we’re recorders of memory anyway, so that helps me a lot. Kelton Reid: I like that. You talk about ‘productive procrastination’ quite a bit, and you’ve written about it. Do you have some best practices for beating procrastination yourself? How to Harness the Power of Productive Procrastination Austin Kleon: Yes. The best thing to do is to practice what you said, productive procrastination, which means have one or two or three things going all at the same time. When you get sick of one thing, you can work on the other thing because you hate the other project so much. Then when you get sick of project two, you can move back to project one. You have to work, but you basically use procrastination as a way to get things done. For me, it’s like, “I don’t want to write this talk that’s coming up, so I’m going to do a blog post,” or “I don’t want to do this blog post, I’m going to go make a poem.” As long as you’re getting something done, you can use procrastination to be productive. Kelton Reid: Love it. How do you unplug at the end of a hard day there? Austin Kleon: Right now, about 8 o’clock at night, my wife and I, after we get our kids down, we just look at each other, and we give each other a hug. We’re like, “You did it. You did it again.” We sit down, and we just watch stupid television — just bathe in the glow of Louie or Hannibal. I love Broad City. Broad city is probably my favorite show. Then if we’re really wiped out — we only get a few channels because they changed to digital and we didn’t get one of those boxes. We only get a few channels and HGTV, so we’ll just turn on House Hunters and just watch the dumbest TV imaginable for 30 or 40 minutes. Then we just go to bed, and I read. That’s basically our ritual. That’s what TV’s for. It’s such a vogue thing that, “Oh, I don’t own a TV,” and I’m like, “That’s what TV is for, is to turn your brain off.” Everyone’s like, “I got to be productive. I got to do this.” Dude, sometimes you need to just not think about anything, and when you need to not think about anything, that is what television is there for. Kelton Reid: Yes. Austin Kleon: The Wire’s great and everything, but House Hunters is like therapy. Kelton Reid: At least you know how to buy a house in Caracas now. One great reminder from Mr. Kleon: writers aren’t born, they are made. Now it’s up to you to do that daily work it takes to get there. Thanks for tuning in to the first part of this interview. The second half will be published early next week, and I think you’re going to want to check it out. For more episodes of The Writer Files and all of the show notes, or to leave us a comment or a question, please drop by WriterFiles.FM. You can subscribe to the show on iTunes. Leave us a rating or review, and help other writers to find us. You can always chat with me on Twitter @KeltonReid. Cheers. See you out there.

TecnoCasters Ep.188 9 Millones de iPhones Vendidos y la Muerte del BlackBerry Con: Juan de Dios Guevara Torres, Lorena Galán, Gaby Barrionuevo, Angel Monjaras y Abrahan Bauza Productor: Abrahan Bauza - Mexico recibirá el Iphone 5S y 5C entre el 10 y 15 de Octubre - 9 Millones de Iphones vendidos y están agotados. - Ipad 5th Generación y Ipad Mini Ya en camino - En que colores vienen? Le damos los detalles - Carriers Celulares empiezan a dejar de vender Blackberry - le decimos cuales - Google cumple 15 anos y cambia su sistema de búsqueda - Twitter Lanza nuevo sistema de emergencia - Nueva actualización del sistema operativo iOS 7.0.2 - importante que lo descargue y le decimos por que. - Las redes sociales en Mexico se encienden contra la conductora Laura Bosso. - BBM para Android y iOS suspendido hasta nuevo aviso. - Aplicaciones de la semana Y como siempre los comentarios de ustedes nuestra audiencias.

Jeff and Dan discuss upcoming plans for the school year as well as their PD for the end of summer.  Google Apps, iPads, Mac Air, Design Thinking and Twitter Chat all get mentions. Bumper music credit:  "Bloops, Bleeps, Bongos & Brass" by Coconut Monkeyrocket. Creative Commons Licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial License and available at http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Coconut_Monkeyrocket

TecnoCasters Episodio 170 Office GRATIS para tu PC y el Nuevo Xbox Con: Juan de Dios Guevara Torres, Gaby Barrionuevo, Angel Monjaras y Abrahan Bauza Productor: Abrahan Bauza Grabación:     Viernes, 3 de Mayo 2013 Transmisión: Lunes,    6 de Mayo 2013 Hoy: • La nueva meta de Google es crear el computador de Star Trek • Chrome OFFICE -- WORD EXCELL Y POWERPOINT en su pc Grastis..! • La espera termino el nuevo Xbox sera presentado el 21 de Mayo • Desarrollan el primer smartphone para ciegos • Seis predicciones para nuestro futuro digital según el CEO de Google • El reto de tu Tecnologia de Univision

Capsula Ferriz-Com ¿Qué es Neuromarketing? Por: Juan D. Guevara Torres

Con: Juan de Dios Guevara Torres, Gaby Barrionuevo, Angel Monjaras y Abrahan BauzaInvitado Especial: La Arañita PanteoneraProductor:     Abrahan BauzaGrabación:        Viernes 25 de Enero de 2013Transmisión:     Lunes 28 Enero de 2013Hoy:- Poke, mensaje que se autodestruye, ahora cuenta con versión para iPhone- Prey Anti-theft para tus dispositivos electrónicos- Surface Pro saldrá a la venta el 9 de febrero desde USD$899 en EEUU- Acciones de Apple siguen bajando

Ep 156 Las novedades del CES 2013 Con: Juan de Dios Guevara Torres, Gaby Barrionuevo y Abrahan BauzaProductor:     Abrahan BauzaGrabación:        Viernes 11 de Enero de 2013Transmisión:     Lunes 14 Enero de 2013 Las novedades del CES 2013 (Consumer Electronic Show). La tecnología transformará más en los próximos 5 años que lo que hizo en los últimos  25 años. Televisores transparentes, cámaras, relojes inteligentes, Automatizacion para su Casa, Papertabs, Table PC’s, Realidad Aumentada, Tenedor Inteligente, Legos Inteligentes, Bluetooth Inteligentes, Autos no Pilotados, lentes de realidad aumentada, un iPhone más económico? Un nuevo walkman para los deportistas, Samsung y Microsoft nos presenta con nuevos dispositivos con pantallas flexibles y mucho mas!

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Gillian Muessig President and Co-founder, SEOmoz Date: May 9, 2011 NCWIT Entrepreneurial Heroes: Interview with Gillian Muessig [intro music] Lucy Sanders: Hi. This is Lucy Sanders, the CEO of the National Center for Women in Information Technology, or NCWIT. I know our listeners know about our "Entrepreneurial Heroes" interview series, which is a great interview series with women who have started IT companies. This is another in that series. With me is Larry Nelson from w3w3.com. Hi, Larry. Larry Nelson: Hi. I'm happy to be here, of course. We really enjoy the fact that everybody from parents as well as employers and leaders and managers, as well as teenage girls, listen to this show. Lucy: I think the person we're interviewing today is just an expert in search optimization. Everybody knows how important the Internet is, and how important it is to have your business, your organization, your personality, found by the most possible people. The person we're interviewing today is a real pioneer in that field, sometimes called the "Queen of Search Optimization." Larry: You betcha. Gillian Muessig: No, I think I'm called the "mom." I'm known as "SEO Mom." Lucy: SEO Mom? OK. Also a queen. We are very lucky to be interviewing today Gillian Muessig, the president and co-founder of SEOmoz. SEOmoz provides one of the world's most popular search marketing applications. The community it serves is huge, over 300,000 search marketers around the world. She also has a weekly radio show, "CEO Coach." This is really interesting to the people who listen to these interviews, because as part of that show, she's covering really important entrepreneurial issues around funding and finance and staffing and marketing and brand development. Welcome, Gillian. We're really happy to have you here today. Gillian: I'm delighted to be here. Thanks for asking. Lucy: What is happening with SEOmoz? Give us the latest. Gillian: The latest and greatest at SEOmoz. Well, I guess we're taking social signals much more seriously, as are the search engines these days. We are the creators of something called "Linkscape." It is a fresh web crawl of the World Wide Web. In other words, we have code known as "Bots" that run out along the Web itself and catalog the pages, just like Google or Microsoft or Yahoo! And so on, in this case Bing, it would be called these days. Similarly, we have a bot that goes out and crawls the Web. It's called, as I said, "Linkscape." It gives us the link graph of the Web. This means how all the pages are connected together with links from one page to the next. It's interesting stuff. It does not make us a search engine. A search engine can also give back answers when you say, "Gee, I'm looking for something. Where is it?" You could also give that back to somebody. That's what makes a full search engine. So if you think of Linkscape, you might think of it as kind of half a search engine. We know what is. Now, we are taking a look at the social graph. So while we crawl the Web for information about links running from here to there, we know that the social signals, which means the noise or the signals we hear on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Cora, Yahoo! Answers -- just thousands of other sites where people gather and talk to each other on the Web. Those are the social sites. When they get busy, the search engines notice, and that kind of information shows up in the search engine results pages, known as SERPs, Search Engine Results Pages. So that's what's new at SEOmoz. We're looking at the social signals and incorporating them into our platform. Lucy: That's amazing. There's so much information going on out there. Absolutely amazing. And great technology. The kinds of algorithms you're doing under the hood there just have to be really fascinating. Gillian: Yeah, they're pretty exciting stuff. If you think of the Google algorithm, I usually say, "Well, it starts somewhere in central Asia and it ends in Sunnyvale, California." It's really large, and it links 1's and 0's. That means it's changing constantly. What is it? 2,500 to 3,000 brilliant engineers are working on it at any given time. What they're trying to do is say, "Gosh, there's a lot of info out there. How would we catalog it and organize it to be on the Web?" And that's the world we deal in. Lucy: I know. Who would have thought it, even 10 years ago? Just amazing. Larry: Whew, not me. [laughter] Gillian: It's a very new industry, and that is one of the interesting things about the world of search. While some technology industries have been around for maybe 30 or 40 years, or much more, the Industrial Age certainly giving way to the Technological Age toward the end of the 20th century. The world of search is pretty much the oldest folks would have been practicing some '97, '98, '99, something like that, when the search engines became of age and became more important, and people began to find things on the Web using a search engine as opposed to using business card that sent them to a specific place. Lucy: It's really changed quite quickly. The historical perspective is fascinating and I think our first question is a little bit of a historical question. How did you first get into technology, Gillian, and what kinds of technologies do you see today that are really interesting to you? Gillian: When I opened my company, it was in 1981, I had one young child a two-year-old at the time. I subsequently raised three children under my desk. The youngest will tell you the color of the blanket he slept on under that desk, so I'm talking literally. I think in 1984, I was doing a consultancy basically, so glorified and employed. I was a consultant. I did traditional media marketing, everything from print media to a little bit of radio and television and so on, but regional stuff. In terms of print media, the first pieces of technology that we really saw came in the late '70's already, when type was no longer moved by pieces. Little slugs of type, and made out of lead, would be moved into place in big wooden boards, and that's how the articles of newspapers were created for advertisements and so on. When it moved from that manual process to something called code type, because the first one was Hocks type. You would actually move the little slugs into place and then melt them together. You would use heat to make sure that they were held together, and then you would break them apart for the next day's news. In this case it was called Cove type, and that was the first computerized type. Maybe that was the first time I got into technology, or really saw it affecting my industry. In 1984, I put a Mac II on my desk. I had more self-control than this advertisement that was coming out of Zenith said I would. It said, "We'll give you one of these Macs for two weeks. You pay us for it, but you can just bring it back and we'll give you your money back if you don't want it." I thought, "Well, I've got more self-control than that. I'm just going to take a look at this thing." Within two hours, of course, it owned me, body, soul and mind, and I never gave it back. [laughter] Gillian: The ad worked, and I bought a Mac. I used Mac for many years. I changed to PC I guess in the '90's. Just recently, we're talking within the last couple of weeks, one of my staff handed me a Mac Air, it's called the MacBook Air, and said, "You're going to love this! It's so lightweight." And I thought, "Really? Back to Mac? I'm an old dog. This is new tricks." [laughs] But yes, I do enjoy carrying it around, because I travel so much that having a very lightweight computer at my fingertips is really nice. So first technology would have been 1979. The First time I owned a real piece of it, if you will, in about 1984. The Web showed up in 1993. Perhaps what you were referring to before, kind of the Grand Dame of Internet marketing, because I was there six seconds before the next guy. In other words, it was just a wild and wooly time, and I was happy to be at ground zero. We had a great deal of excitement and ideas around it. I continued my business for a number of years, but certainly we were beginning to do things like offer websites to our clients, in which we were doing general graphics or advertisements, or perhaps annual reports and logos and that sort of design. We were now adding websites to that, and then we were adding better websites, because we had Flash. Then it was realized that the search engines were becoming more important, and search engines could not read Flash. A search bot is blind and deaf. It cannot see pictures, it cannot hear sound. So we had to go back to HTML and maybe incorporate elements of images and so on, and identify them. With that, search began. As a search engine became more important and required text to be able to find out what a document was about, we had to optimize a page. It meant you couldn't just put a picture on a page, because a search engine cannot see it. You had to tell it what that picture was. That, perhaps, was the very first piece of optimization. How we'd label pages, we'd say, "This page is about something. It's my website.com." Then you would put in a subject, you know, red cars. [laughs] And, "Oh! That page must be about red cars." The very beginnings of search engine optimization were very simple. Today it's a highly complex field. We don't even think of it as SEO. So answering the second half of your question, what do I find interesting in moving forward now? Certainly, we are deep into the information society, where information is power. It always has been, but it's just become more in the forefront. The concept of marketing has changed, both online and offline. It's changing the way we do business and the way we communicate. From governments to private corporations and individual human beings, we think of things now as inbound marketing, as opposed to push marketing. It used to be that I would make an ad, and I would kind of take a megaphone in whatever field I was in, whether it was print or radio or TV or whatever, and shout out to the world what I needed them to know. That's no longer acceptable. People don't like it. They never really did like it, but now they have choices. Now people want me to give them information when they want to see it, when they want to learn about it and when they are ready for it and in the way that they wish to see it. That means multiple-size screens such as iPhones, little phones, Android and things like that, cell phones, web-enabled cell phones, to iPad and similarly-sized screens to the next size, which is Netbooks and then laptops, to the huge screens that sit on our walls at home and sometimes cover entire walls. That would be 55-, 60-, and 70-inch television screens that also serve as interactive, Internet-capable products. I find that kind of technology fascinating and I think that's where we're headed in the future, a multi-sized delivery of information just when the consumer wants it. Larry: Gillian, thank you for sharing all that history. In fact, we are going to make sure that if people want to understand the history, they should come back and listen to this interview. Now why is it that you are an entrepreneur and what is it about an entrepreneurship that makes you tick? Gillian: [laughs] Entrepreneurship is a hereditary disease, not a profession. [laughter] I say to people often (I do a lot of coaching about entrepreneurship and I serve on the board of advisors of companies on four continents now) that entrepreneurship is something that you have to want, and you have to want it so desperately that you are willing to walk through what I call "the Dip." I know Seth Cotton talks about it. There's a fine little book called The Dip. But I see it slightly differently. The very short version is that in order to get to the other side of a chasm of all of the folks who are trying to do what you're doing and overcoming all of the impediments to success, you have to walk through this valley of the shadow of death. After that, we don't get quite that translation correct. It's not that "Yet I fear no evil". It's "If you fear no evil, you will not walk out." [laughter] So understanding entrepreneurship is: You have a great idea, and you decide you want to bring it to the marketplace, but you must walk through this chasm of impediments to success. And sometimes it gets very, very dark. I help entrepreneurs through that space quite often. It is not just that there are financial qualifications. For instance, one needs funding and that can be very difficult. Or perhaps one can fund it oneself, but are you willing to put at risk all of the monies required to do so? People will put their homes at risk. They will mortgage things and sell their vehicles and live with their parents and do all kinds of things in order to afford to make this thing fly. It's like throwing money at a passion. But in some ways it's very analogous to being addicted. You must do this thing once you get it going, right? Now the second piece is not financial stuff necessarily, but how everybody else looks at you. There are a number of entrepreneurs, some of them very amusing, who are radio personalities as well who will say things like the whole world will tell you that you are stark, raving mad. That there's no way you can do this, that it's not possible, and so on. And when all of that volume of voice and noise comes at you, do you have the fortitude to continue to walk and to say, "No, I know in my gut what I've got is right and I'm going to make it happen." Then the last piece would be the strength of this idea you have. If you're building it, for example, in technology and software, will this code hold up to what you need? If you have some kind of success, do your servers crash, do things begin to fall apart, can you do the customer service part, and can you do the company part and not just the idea part? What I say is that every truly brilliant company in the world has two parts. It has a technologist, a wizard, the brilliant idea person. And it has a business person. The business person's responsibility is to protect the wizard. If the wizard is thinking about anything else except what's next, you're losing money. Now any business person can make themselves a business. They can go sell shoes. They can go sell office furniture. They can do whatever they want. They make a decent business and sometimes they make quite a good one. Many, many technologists have brilliant ideas, but cannot for the life of them do the business piece of it. There are far more technologists who cannot succeed in business than there are business people who somehow cannot succeed at all because they don't have the brilliancy. But if you put the two together, you get something that is an explosion, an extraordinary universe of stuff that happens. And that's when you have these brilliant companies like Yahoo, Google, and so on. I was fortunate in my time to have such a technologist and to be able to work with him. I'm really in the end a business person. The technologist is Rand Fishkin, arguably the most famous name in search marketing today. I could build a brand around a human being. I could then build a brand around the company, and then the company has become very powerful in its field. Again, knowing your playing field is an important piece. But I have walked through that dip, that "valley of the shadow of death" when people told us this could not be done. I often say people who say that a thing cannot be done are often interrupted by those who are doing it. So, on October 6, 2008, SEOmoz interrupted a whole lot of people when we created this thing called Linkscape, which is a crawl of the World Wide Web. A whole lot of people said you have to be Google or Bing or whatever to do something like that. It cannot be done. It'll take ten thousand brilliant engineers and millions of dollars and you haven't got that. We did it. And when it was done, it powered all of our tool sets. So why am I an entrepreneur? It's because it's in my blood. It's because I see ideas. I can kind of put together a meal of products out of groups of intellectual properties, if you will. It's like throwing a bunch of ingredients on the table in the kitchen and coming up with a meal. It's like what Iron Chefs do. The same idea happens with entrepreneurship and it's what I do. I look at this collatinus collection of clattering junk and from it comes a product that is saleable. So that is what I think makes entrepreneurs what they are. It's the fortitude to move forward. It's the ability to see a jumble of ideas and possibilities and to create real product out of it. And brilliant companies or really brilliant entrepreneurs, those who have that partner technologist [inaudible 17:05. Lucy: So as an entrepreneur, Gillian, who supported you along this path? Do you have particular mentors or role models? What might you be able to tell the listeners about that? Gillian: Well, I think that's why I became a CEO coach, because there were precious few when I came through this path. I see that Rand, for example, who is now the CEO of SEOmoz, has a number of mentors who are coming to his aid and whom he has been able to seek out. But as we walked the very earliest days, there were things that I would have given my left arm to have known about. There were times when I would call practically a hundred people and not one of them could give me the answer I needed. So in a sense, I was not well-connected and I didn't have entrepreneurs who had been successful on at least one level larger than I was. I think there are very few when you are in the very, very early stages who will reach that hand out. You have to get through a certain barrier first. You have to reach some kind of critical mass before it gets recognized as a viable business and then you get those kinds of mentors beginning to take notice. So I decided that if I ever walked out of that valley, that's what I would do, that's what I would give back. That's why I do CEO coach every week. I don't get paid for this or anything. I promised that I would give answers, that I would name names and give numbers and tell people what to expect and help them to leverage the assets they had and to walk through that very difficult time when you are proving your concept and making it through to the other side. Of course, the scarcity is what makes success. If it were easy, if there were no chasm of all of these impediments-and I only mentioned three, but if it were easy to get from one end to the other, from brilliant idea to successful marketplace for everybody, then there would be no scarcity. Trust me when I say to people who are considering entrepreneurship, it's worth it. [laughter] Larry: I love it! Yes. Gillian: It is so worthwhile on the other side. The answer is, it is all the things that you would dream it would be. There is a certain amount of exclusivity. There is a satisfaction beyond anything else that comes from knowing you did it. Larry: Wow. With all the things you've been through, what's the toughest thing that you've had to do in your career? Gillian: Possibly two pieces and I think they're related. The very first one I had to learn to do was to move from being a consultant, a sole consultant, to being a real entrepreneur, somebody who had a company, who had people working with them, in other words, a team. I used to walk out, shake hands with somebody, and say, "Yes sir, I can do that," and go back and do it. That was easy. Whatever it was, it was easy. It meant I did it. I could rely on me and I knew my own mettle and I could trust me. The first time I walked out and said, "Yes sir, I can do that," and went back to the office and said, "I sure as shooting hope you folks can do that, because I can't," that was scary. To be able to rely on a team of people to do it as well as you would hope them to do because you cannot do a thing, that's entrepreneurship. That's really moving from being a sole proprietor to being a full-size company. The second piece was saying no to a customer, understanding that there are clients and client wannabes. They wannabe a client but they don't wanna pay. Client wannabees. Learning to recognize client wannabes in your business sector is terribly important, because otherwise they will suck the blood out of you and never pay for what they take. Generally they pay very low amounts, the lowest you will charge, and they take the most time. The less a client pays, the more hand holding they generally need. So understanding that you need to fire the bottom four clients on your list every year and make way for new ones who will pay you more, respect you more, understand the value of your service more and so on, that's a critical piece of success in moving forward in being a company. People who cannot let a client go regardless of how much this client fusses and complains and makes it a personal thing as opposed to a business thing and so on, doesn't recognize the value of the service, on and on and on. All of these complaints about the client, if they cannot let that client go they will forever be an individual consultant that's not terribly successful. Those who can get through it and understand the process become successful companies. Lucy: Along our discussion there have been so many characteristics that come across in your answers to these questions that I think make you a great entrepreneur. You're very thoughtful, very persistent. I think you're very funny, you have a great sense of humor and have a great sense of history and analytical, but what other kinds of personal characteristics do you think have given you an advantage as an entrepreneur? Gillian: I think that perhaps that is the most important question. I espouse and I truly believe that people should bring their personal values to the corporate marketplace. Separating them is not possibility and that we kid ourselves when we do it. It also makes for a, not just lesser, but a really foul business environment and I think for centuries we've experienced it. I hope that what I build is not perhaps the world's finest search marketing software company and this and that and the next thing, but another way to do business. Often it's known as theory X and theory Y management. Theory X management being all about the fix, about fear, about worrying about whether the boss is going to dislike this or deduct that or reduce your pay or fire you and so on and so forth. That's theory X stuff, screaming, yelling and so on. Theory Y is somehow coddling, if you will. All about the positive but I think there is more to theory Y than simply coddling or supporting and so on. I think it has to do with bringing your personal values to the corporate marketplace. As an entrepreneur I can't have a company unless I have people doing the things that my company produces whether it's product, service, consulting, whatever it is. They don't work for me, they work with me. Without me they have no job and without them I have no job. It's not that it's really different at all, it's just different roles within an organization. I recognize that there is no complete, flat equality. There is no such ideas, communism if you will. It is a hierarchy and certainly it was my money on the table, it was on my back that this thing got started, it was Rand's ideas and so on that made it happen. All of those things, so it does put a couple of founders in its place that is different than the employee status, if you will. On the other hand, we feel that we work with a team, it's not that the team works for us. When I didn't have two nickels to rub together, when we were having conversations that said things like, 'What will it take to keep body and soul together this week?' Like, who shall take a paycheck this week? When we were having those kinds of conversations, it was that bad, I would pay the medical insurance 100% in full first. I never even thought to give somebody a salary and let them choose whether or not they wanted medical insurance. It's part of the salary, it's part of the package, there is no choice because many of the people who work for me are very young and when you're very young you think you're invincible. Nothing is ever going to happen to you and you will live forever and life is good until somebody gets glioblastoma or somebody gets hit by a bus riding a bicycle to work in the afternoon, that's when things go wrong. It was incumbent upon me to say, "No. I know better, I've lived longer, I'm a parent." Never mind anything else and many of these people are young enough to be my kids, hence the word SEO mom but there were a number of reasons why I got called SEO mom but as a result it was my responsibility to do those kinds of things. So we pay 100% of medical insurance. We do kind of what they call platinum level medical insurance. we don't skimp on those kinds of things. Certainly we do things like tech companies to all over the place like the Googleplex will do and so on. We offer lunch here and breakfast there and something else and we celebrate things and it's a lot of fun But we actually walk the talk, if you look at the SEOmoz website there's something called TAGSEE, T-A-G-S-E-E. The first one stands for transparency, second letter, authenticity, the third, generosity and so on down the road, you can read all about it. We don't just say it we actually live it. We hire for personality first and then we look for skill sets which makes it difficult to find people because you can find a set of skills it's just, does it also come with the right kind of personality? I was talking about it with one of my staff this morning and I said, "You know, I think what happens here is very childlike or perhaps like going to the movies." We suspend belief when we go into the movies. We suspend belief every time we walk into this office. We are complete optimists. We should all have our own [inaudible 26:30] chapter here. We walk in and pretend that it's possible, that nothing is impossible and we do it every single day. We work and live and play with the people here, and they certainly do, they have all kinds of activities around the office and outside the office and just get together because they're friends as well. Because it's like souls, if you will, we all agree that you step into this room there is nothing we cannot do and doggone, we do it. Imagine what you can accomplish. I think that because we spend so much of our time at our workplaces, I know that we change jobs much more frequently than we did a generation or two ago but even still, for the time that we are all together it's much more than just a job. This is about fulfilling the soul as well as the business career requirements of the people who work here. I think of my job as giving everyone here wings to fly and then watch them fly. Larry: Gillian, with all the things that you've done, what do you do to bring balance to your personal and professional lives? Gillian: I guess that's kind of the answer I gave at the last question. Larry: Yeah. Gillian: I bring my personal life to life to the office. I don't think of it as work, I think it was Thomas Edison who said, "'I never worked a day in my life, it's all fun." When I was a little girl of three or four years old and I could turn the pages of a book I wanted to see this big wide world. I am the most fortunate person in the world. I get to run around the world as what's now known as corporate evangelist for SEOmoz. This is what happens by the way when they put you out to pasture. Before, I was the sole business person that was complementing the technologist that was Rand Fishkin. Rand is now the CEO, he has full reigns of the business, but there's only one strange relationship in business, and that's mother and son. You can't be a mommy's boy as a CEO so it was time for me to step way, way back. We have a COO here, we've got a CMO here, we've got a CPO, all of those C level executive places have now been filled and all of the things that I used to do, these eight and nine and ten hats, they're being worn by 10 and 12 and 14 people. If I was still doing all of them we would still be a tiny company. So it's important to seed the company, to let it grow and to let it expand. For me now, my job is to run around the world and make sure people say SEOmoz instead of SEO and so far so good, it's pretty cool. I get to be paid for this, what an extraordinary adventure. For me this balance of life and work and so on, it's fulfilling on so many levels. I'm, as I said, the most fortunate person in the world. Lucy: I noticed when we were researching for this interview that you have given lots and lots of keynotes and talks so you must be quite successful in your evangelist role. Gillian: Yes, I'd say so. I have somewhat of a reputation under SEO mom myself, if you will, under Gillian Muessig but I usually say, I don't go anywhere in the world, SEOmoz goes, it shows up in my body. Yes, I do a lot of keynote speaking, I do a lot of pro bono work and I support a tremendous number of entrepreneurs around the world and it's very gratifying. Lucy: Thank you very much for doing that. You've done so much with your career so far. I am suspicious that there's more to come so why don't you tell us a little bit about what's next for you. Gillian: Probably a book, a number of people are telling me it's time to do that so I have to knuckle down and do that but I think that's just in support of, if you will, a personal brand. I think the next thing, when I grow up, what do I want to be? The next thing that I will do is around entrepreneurship itself. I'm focusing more and more on it over the years. I have a serious interest in what you're doing essentially, in making sure that young women somewhere between the ages of 12 and 20 don't lose themselves and their souls in just societal expectations and norms, but do turn to the hard sciences, to technology, to science, to mathematics, to physics, all of those kinds of things and certainly to web related or intellectual property related fields. All of those things are terribly exciting. Women make very good mangers. They have traditionally not been part of it and I think whatever I do in the future will be helping to open the doors so that women can enter the marketplace in their rightful numbers if you will. We spend a tremendous amount of time in my childhood and youth as women working on those issues. It was the age feminism, it was the age of all of those kinds of rebellions and so on. We worked really, really hard guys but, gosh, we've got a long ways to go so rather than apologizing for the next generation, I think my next deal will be helping that next generation reach goals that we have only dreamed of. Lucy: Thank you for doing that and thank you for all of your hard work for entrepreneurship, in general. We'll look forward to staying in touch, it was great fun talking to you and I want to remind listeners that they can find this interview at w3w3.com and also ncwit.org. Larry: You betcha. Gillian: Thank you, it's been a great pleasure. If I have only one message for the young women listening, it's do it. Don't fear it, just do it. There's lots of women out there ready to extend a helping hand in making sure that you're successful, too. Lucy. Thank you. Larry: You betcha. Lucy: We really appreciate that. Larry: Thank you. Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Gillian MuessigInterview Summary: Gillian Muessig, aka "SEOMom," is the President and Co-Founder of SEOmoz, providers of the world's most popular search marketing applications. SEOmoz.org serves a community of 300,000 search marketers around the world. Release Date: May 9, 2011Interview Subject: Gillian MuessigInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 31:22

If you've given any thought to Linux, I'd like to recommend a couple of books to you. One is for those who want the basics and not much more. The other is for those who want to know everything. Would you like the Windows Explorer to open to a specific drive or directory each time you use it? I'll tell you how. PC Magazine has released a new utility that improves how traceroute works. In Short Circuits, why I love the Kindle but hate Amazon's Kindle policies, a new way to buy Mac software, and some Mac Air models that will tempt you.

James and John continue their series on Macintosh System Software with System 7.5 and 7.6. eBay Finds are a Dynamac Mac clone, prototype Mac Air, and Lisa 1. News includes the iPhone 2.2 release and an autographed Mac Plus found on Flickr. Other related links from this episode:Join the website at RetroMacCastSteve Jobs goes to HollywoodKathy on the Typical Mac User PodcastApple: Older Software DownloadsEdible Apple: Old school Steve Jobs flicks off IBMPagetable.com:  Inside Macintosh Volumes I,II, III (PDF)

Wow! The Podfather has finally made it to an event live! After many years of being the virtual voice from 'across the pond' or 'up in the Northern Hemisphere' I have finally made it to the same time zone and indeed city as educational colleagues that I have been talking and collaborating with over the past few years. Coming to my first NECC this year was important, as I knew that a 30 strong delegation of Australian teachers had NECC planned in on an educational tour, and it would possibly be the one and only time to meet members of this active community who have a flourishing 'flashmeeting' lead discussion group of over 30 teachers who meet up virtually every Sunday evening. Also here this year are Dorothy Burt and her husband Russell from Point England School in New Zealand -if you have never seen their KPE video podcasts believe me you are missing out (http://www.ptengland.school.nz/index.php?family=1,449).It was great to meet them at the ISTE's International Visitors reception on Sunday afternoon. I am travelling light this time around without a large 'brick' laptop but with my trusty Asus Eeepc900- the mini MacAir ( ha! sorry Dean and Ewan!) and so far the tiny machine is proving to be well up to the job seeking out free wi-fi with ease and being a good platform to blog and podcast from. I leave you with just a thought where else would it be possible to stroll out from the 'air conditioned hell' of a conference venue, walk along the delightful Riverwalk to lunch with Dean Groom (abstracted Englishman), Ewan McIntosh (Scotsman), Judy O'Connell (Australian) and of course me (slightly confused as a Welsh Aussie( adopted by Oz Group)? Well here of course!!!! (Doh!) Podfather signing off at 6.15am CST San Antonio, Texas - Yee　Ｈａ！