Just to reiterate all the points made.
Books=Gold. A lot of people will never realize this, and that's better for those of us who love books.
I'll also give you an example that I heard from a podcast I've been listening too (going through 97 archived podcasts...so time consuming, so worth it).
[Go Magic Go, for those who are interested]
And one of the hosts is a mentalist. He said there are two ways to approach magic, one was the route he took. When he saw metal bending he wanted to do it. So he went out and bought books and tapes on metal bending-learned and perfected the material-and is a successful magician/mentalist.
On the other hand, Banachek (if you don't know who he is, right now is a good time to Google him...) saw metal bending and he went home, took some spoons or forks and worked on ways to achieve the same effects he'd seen. He re-created a lot of material, but also found some new things out when he was doing this.
It's this process that has led Banachek into a career developing new ideas and concepts. He'd been doing it from the start and that helped him tremendously, later on when he had an final effect he wanted to accomplish, he could then work backwards easier since he had trained himself to do so.
Another thing, from a different episode, that was mentioned and stuck out to me was something to the effect of:
"Think about what real magic would look like. If a spectator could really select a free card, if it was really mixed into the deck and then you do whatever it is the effect calls for...what would that look like? Your job as a magician is to try and make a handling that mimics that, as close as possible."
The issue was which was more fair and natural in terms of card forces.
In a world where we did real magic...a spectator would bring a deck, already have a card in mind and have shuffled long before you ever touch the deck-never reveal their card...and you could do magic with it.
Good luck with that one.
-Rik