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" The last book I read before I wrote my first book - 'Ghosts of Manhattan' - was 'The Gold Coast' by DeMille. I loved it, and it gave me a lot of energy to start into my own. "
Douglas Brunt
Start
Me
Loved
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" Your spouse, a sibling, a friend need to read your drafts. They have to be people unafraid to tell you what sucks. For early feedback, that's more important than professional editorial skill. Most people know what sucks. "
Douglas Brunt
Professional
People
Friend
" I did interviews with tennis greats, like James Blake and John Isner. I also interviewed tennis pros who aren't well - known but who made all the same sacrifices but had just a little spark of a professional career and are now still orbiting the sport, either as a teaching pro or a coach. "
Douglas Brunt
Career
Professional
Spark
" It's common knowledge that professional athletes earn extraordinary incomes. What is less known or understood is how the advent of these riches has seeped into the conscious and unconscious ways in which our society now parents children. "
Douglas Brunt
Children
Society
Knowledge
" Don't write more than 3 hours at a time. I write three hours in the morning, 9 A.M. - 12 P.M. Other people are best late at night. "
Douglas Brunt
People
Best
Late
" In my first book, 'Ghosts Of Manhattan,' the setting was Wall Street, and I explored the predictable nature of a bond trader inside the compensation scheme at Bear Stearns and the government regulations of Wall Street. That was about money. "
Douglas Brunt
Money
Bond
Book
" On Wall Street, every story becomes known so quickly. They are all so connected that everything disseminates there faster than anywhere. "
Douglas Brunt
Everything
Story
Street
" Wall Street has played a role in everyone's life, and it has been vilified by everyone, but I think that the average trader didn't have a sense of what was coming. The culture is so vacuous, it's possible to come to it straight out of college and never have a real adult life, even if you have the wife and kids. "
Douglas Brunt
Culture
Life
Wife
" I prefer a change of surroundings anyway, and I like to be around some energy and white noise, so I usually go to a Barnes & Noble cafe or to the library on 5th and 42nd. In the afternoons, I do research, reading, editing, and play with the kids. "
Douglas Brunt
Play
Energy
Reading
" I'm really troubled by the prevalence of single-sport specializations. I want my kids to do as many things for as long as they can. Specialization is a natural thing that should come later - it shouldn't come for 8-year-olds. "
Douglas Brunt
Want
Natural
Things
" A theme I'm obsessed with is the tension between human nature and the frameworks designed to curb the worst and promote the best of it. "
Douglas Brunt
Worst
Nature
Human
" In September of 2001, I was living in the West Village of Manhattan, working from my home for a tech start-up. "
Douglas Brunt
Home
September
Village
" With tennis, if you're very good at a young age, you don't even go to your prom. You're down at some tennis academy in Florida where you're on the court 8 hours a day. It's brutal. "
Douglas Brunt
Good
You
Young
" I've been pretty damn happy since 2001. More apparent danger than real danger for me, and even the apparent danger hasn't kept me from feeling warm, safe and loved. I've found love and a partner to raise three children that I'm glad to have brought into this beautiful world. "
Douglas Brunt
Happy
Children
Beautiful
" The main influence on voters should be a series of robust debates among the candidates. It's a free country, so this is a tough problem to solve, but I'd love to see an election season with zero political ads, and all voters had to decide based on watching four national debates over the two months leading to election day. "
Douglas Brunt
Election
Political
Love
" I do like Pat Conroy, and 'The Great Santini' is an iconic book. "
Douglas Brunt
Book
Great
Iconic
" There used to be a few 'Great Santinis', but now there's many 'Great Santinis'. "
Douglas Brunt
Great
Now
Used
" New York can get on top of you if you don't have much money, but if you have money, it's kind of a playground. "
Douglas Brunt
Money
New
New York
" Adverbs lead to overwriting. Try taking them out and reading your prose again to see how it sounds. Simple and less words are more powerful. "
Douglas Brunt
Words
Try
Simple
" Don't copy another writer's style, because that is not authentic, and that's how it will sound. You develop your style over your whole life and through countless influences. Don't impose something artificial. "
Douglas Brunt
Sound
Style
Will
" I turned six in 1977. Youth athletics then was nothing like this, and I wondered how things changed so much. I started looking at our societal emphasis on sports, using the most tangible metric by which we measure emphasis: money. "
Douglas Brunt
Measure
Sports
Youth
" I've seen terrorism close up, but I don't live in a state of terror at all. I'm comfortable going to the Manhattan Thanksgiving Day Parade, the tree lighting at Rockefeller Center, Times Square on New Years Eve. For perspective, the world today is a safer place than it was during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Berlin Airlift, World War II. "
Douglas Brunt
Tree
Today
Day
" Style matters, but the real force of writing is ideas, not style. "
Douglas Brunt
Style
Real
Matters
" The job for cable is to give the news and then also give the 'so what.' "
Douglas Brunt
Give
Job
Then
" Dad was a retired hedge fund manager who made enough millions to retire and focus on my game. Before that, he was on the 1984 U.S. Olympic swimming team. No medals. He was accustomed to winning at everything, but no medals in 1984. "
Douglas Brunt
Focus
Winning
Team
" Three hours of creating is taxing on any brain, and you should stop there. Some days, you may stop without any words at all. It's much easier to write new stuff the next day than to go through painful deletions of a day's worth of crap you already wrote. "
Douglas Brunt
You
Brain
Day
" D.C. is a small town with some big-town features. "
Douglas Brunt
Small
Features
Town
" Washington isn't utterly dysfunctional. "
Douglas Brunt
Utterly
Dysfunctional
Washington
" If there is going to be any meaningful sales, it's going to be through word of mouth and people recommending it to their book club and then a thousand more book clubs do it, and then you get into real sales numbers. "
Douglas Brunt
Numbers
People
Sales
" Dad met Mom in 1983 during the lead-up to the 1984 games. She was an Olympic downhill skier. In those days, the winter and summer games were held in different cities but in the same year, so there was more intermingling of winter and summer athletes at social functions. "
Douglas Brunt
Year
Summer
Winter
" New York is big, fast, energetic, and has the most and best of everything. While it can push the senses, it's the most convenient place to live. It's much easier for a ninety year old to live in New York City than in the suburbs. NYC is the best mass assisted-living facility on the planet. "
Douglas Brunt
City
Best
Live