Listen and learn!

I recently spent a day with my friends Marc Oberon and Iain Moran, at Marc's beautiful house in Nottingham, and I came away buzzing. Watching them demonstrating their different styles of close-up magic is always fun in itself but I particularly relish the discussion around it, the evaluation of each trick, the suggestions, the tweaking and reworking, the synthesis of ideas.

Marc Oberon, on a rare day off

If you're a new magician, I encourage you to spend as much time as possible hanging out with experienced, established members of the profession. Apart from the fact it can be so much fun, you can learn tons from just listening to them talk and tossing ideas around. As I've said in my Ten Top Tips for Becoming a Good Magician, get involved as much as you can. Join a magic society if there's one near you, go to conventions, frequent your local magic shop. Of course, not everything experienced magicians tell you will be useful (or even true) but soaking up their ideas and distilling them into your own will save you a lot of time and, for me, anyway, it's a very stimulating process.