Did you know that there is a formula for success?

Did you know that there was a formula for success and excellence that it doesn't just happen?

While some of us are born beautiful or born smart,

I guess with a high IQ, whatever that means, true success, vast majority of people who are successful,

there's a formula for it. And the reason why I bring this up, I get all the time people email me and they say, you know, Karen, can you help me with my book? Or, you know, I want to be a writer. Can you give me some tips? And my response is always the same. First of all, I'm busy. No. Write. The way to become a great writer is to write. Get up every day, write a page, get up every day

and write 500 words, write a thousand words every single day, and soon you will see that

you'll be a writer. When I started at the New York Daily News a thousand years ago, I didn't consider myself a

writer. As a matter of fact, I was very insecure about my writing. I would have so many writing

books in my desk drawer because I, you know, I just didn't feel confident. And I remember when

that clicked for me. And it was shortly after I wrote my first book. I didn't

think I was a writer when I wrote my first book. I thought I was just following a format.

But that gave me my training wheels. But what I didn't consider was by the time I wrote my first

book, which was in 1997, I think it was 1997. I make my own rules with LL Cool J.

I had been a writer, I'm putting up air quotes, for eight years, nine years, that writing every

day, which I was doing for the New York Daily News, writing every day for eight years, I had

probably put in more than 10,000 hours.

And then the book put me over the top because that was 60,000 words.

So this is math.

This is not a mystery.

And when I got into this discussion on the air on Sirius about excellence and that there is there is you know you see people every day

who say you know oh I can do that you know they see somebody on TV and they say oh I can do that

I can do what Gail King did in that R. Kelly interview or I can do what with what Don Lemon does

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