Americans are good with to-do lists; just tell us what to do, and we'll do it. Throughout our history, we have proven that. Colonize. Check. Win our independence. Check. Form a union. Check. Expand to the Pacific. Check. Settle the West. Check. Keep the Union together. Check. Industrialize. Check. Fight the Nazis. Check.
There's a special gut-check moment the first time you write a scene in which somebody casts a spell.
I never thought I'd write one book, let alone three. I'm absolutely delighted and every night, thank the good lord for spell check.
I listen to a lot of audio books and business-related books. All of the great businessmen have one thing in common: they write down their goals. They keep a journal. Not only that, but I write down my goals, and I check it off: whether or not I ate right, work out, check it off.
I did a couple of writing seminars in Canada with high school kids. These were the bright kids; they all have computers, but they can't spell. Because spell-check won't [help] you if you don't know through from threw. I told them, "If you can read in the 21st century, you own the world." Because you learn to write from reading.
One of the most popular scams is what they call account takeover. You write me a check, and I simply go online to a check-printing service and order 200 checks with your account information.
Every year for New Years I write down all of my goals and dreams and put them in my Bible. At the end of the year I go and pull the paper out and check this off and check that off.
When you live from freelance check to freelance check, your mind is always on "What's the next piece I'm going to write, or draw, that'll pay this month's rent?" And so going out to play ball with my kids was a low priority.
I hit Instagram and Twitter as soon as I wake up. And then I check my texts and emails. It's funny that I check social media before I check my email.
There are, in fact, apps you can use to measure how many times you check your phone, and I shudder to think how many times I check my phone. I'm sure it would be probably in the hundreds of times that I check over the course of the day.
The more helpful our phones get, the harder it is to be ourselves. For everyone out there fighting to write idiosyncratic, high-entropy, unpredictable, unruly text, swimming upstream of spell-check and predictive auto-completion: Don't let them banalize you. Keep fighting.
I really am a full-blown Scorpio. Whenever I look things up about my sign, it's like, Check, check, check: thoughtful, detailed, moody, stubborn, prideful, emotional.
I wake up and check my Instagram to see what I missed out on last night. Then I check my Twitter. Then I check my Tumblr.
I've learned the hard way at the national level that any erroneous statement will very quickly be magnified. So, as someone who talks for a living, I've learned to check, double-check and triple-check my sources.
I am usually a pacer. I go to the balcony to check the sight lines way up there, to check the sound system to see how the balance is.