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It’s a trash can. Not a physical one, but a mental trash can. It’s for discarding advice that doesn’t feel right for you. It doesn’t seem like the right answer. Your gut tells you this advice isn’t for you. It just doesn’t resonate. If that happens, you should ignore that tip and move on. My teacher would say, “Use what feels right and discard the rest.” I think a lot of writers forget to take out their trash can when they’re learning about writing. But it really pays to keep it handy.

It’s easy to get caught up in the fact that we want others to love what we write. We make one tiny, harmless alteration after another, and eventually our work becomes something else entirely.

Everything Google is doing, from Google+ to semantic search serves its mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

In order for Google to provide the most relevant search results, it looks beyond the keywords to find context of your query based on your connections and social signals, +1’s, shares, likes etc..

Google Authorship ties you to your content no matter where you publish on the web where “rel=authorship” is installed.

If you sit down at a blank screen every day and simply do nothing then you are a writer. If you write one word, even better. Some people will disagree. Maybe you will disagree. That's fine. We also can all disagree. Meanwhile, our DNA is telling us we are pretty much exactly the same.

I try to read pieces or chapters in 3-4 books a day or more. I read at least from one non-fiction, one or two quality fiction, and one inspirational. I try to read at the level I want to write. I do this in the morning before I start writing.

Destroy every gatekeeper.

I’m a freelancer, but I have a couple of contract gigs that play a big role in my monthly and daily cycles. I’m the science editor at BoingBoing.net, a technology and culture blog with 6 million monthly readers. I also have a monthly column with The New York Times Magazine.

The rest of the day really varies a lot, depending on what I have on my plate at that given time. I have ADHD and it’s really easy for me to get distracted and be unproductive, so I have lots of little tricks I rely on to keep me focused throughout the day. I used to use a timer on my computer a lot, just to have something that, periodically, forced me to look up and think about what I was doing and what I had to do next. But I find now that the two hours between breast pump sessions actually does that job pretty well. I also jump back and forth between stuff on my to-do list, depending on what I feel motivated to do. If I just can’t get myself to write during a given two-hour block, I’m better off answering email or sending out interview requests than just sitting there, staring at a blank page.

Skype, Call Recorder, and Stickies.