Ok, I am a young magician, about 15, and I have been learning magic for about two months, and now I am starting to get the serious books, such as royal road to card magic and stuff.

but I have one question... is there any practice regiment I should be on?
how long should I practice...
should I spend an equal amount of time on each theme of magic...
and how long should I practice when starting out...

thanks

I don't think "just starting out" makes a difference, except that unless you turn pro you may be hard pressed to be able to spend as much time on magic as an adult as you can in your teens.

If I could go back in time and tell myself how to practice, this is what I would say:

1. Decide on a goal. "I'll learn this trick, which also requires me to learn this sleight."

2. Once you have a goal, FOCUS. You can pursue multiple goals at the same time, but don't spread yourself too thin. Two new tricks to practice at the same time is plenty -- and even one can be more then enough. I definitely suggest not practicing too many new sleights at the same time: I've found I learn much faster if I limit myself to one or two new things at a time.

3. Focusing on your goals doesn't mean that you can't do anything else -- but make sure you spend at least 25% of your magic time on your goals. Reading The Magic Café, browsing online shops, visiting bricks and mortar shops, reading magic books, talking with other magicians, etc, are ALL parts of your magic time. So, if you spend 45 minutes reading the forums, you should spend 15 minutes practicing your stuff. Actually, I suggest that you should probably spend 25% of your time studying magic books. So make that 30 minutes on the forums, 15 minutes on practice, and 15 minutes reading a book... (I think this is pretty close to the split Ascanio suggests, but I don't have the book with me right now.)

4. Work on your goals every day, even if only shortly. Remember: 1 hour every day of the week is better then 7 hours on a single day. MUCH BETTER. Make that focused practice. 15 minutes of focused practice is worth a million hours of distracted tinkering.

5. Review every week. How much progress have you made? How much further is there to go? The review is all-important: it gives you a sense of progress. Even if you don't feel you're making any progress, don't give up too soon, but think: are you not making progress because you're spreading yourself too thin? If so, drop stuff. Maybe you're stuck because what you're not doing things correctly? Check and double-check. Think. Are you stuck because you've just picked something really hard? This is the biggie, and think before you decide: then you can either keep at it, or drop it for now -- some things ARE better saved for later, but the important thing is to make sure you're giving your goals the focus they deserve, and that you are doing things the right way: I've declared things "too hard" several times only to later discover I was doing them wrong, or I was just a week or two from learning something wonderful!

6. Be ruthlessly honest with yourself: once you get a certain level of fluency you can easily get a huge rush out of it, and that rush will make you feel you're ready to take on the world. Maybe you are, maybe you are not. I would suggest that once you feel that something is performance ready, give it some more time -- maybe a day or two, maybe a week or a month -- while you continue working on it.

I'm not saying you necessarily need it, but this extra time can be a great source of confidence when you finally perform your new wonder. ...and lack of confidence is something that will make you nervous, and feeling nervous while you perform will make you perform less, and finally you end up doing nothing but reading stuff and pretending you could perform if you wanted to. Been there, done that, barely got out, and still have one foot in that grave.

7. Make notes. I would recommend pen and paper notebook over a computer for the ease of drawing, but nothing wrong with notes on a computer. Write out your reviews, write out your ideas, write out the stuff you know, write out your scripts, write out your thoughts on the books you've read. If nothing else, when you are feeling out of it, you can look back at your old stuff and see how much you've progressed (and sometime you can find gems you've forgotten.)

Remember: "Magician is made one trick at a time."

Trivia Quiz: Reading what I just wrote, influence of a certain magician is clear. Can you name this magician? If not, maybe you should read more...

I think Nikodemus put his finger on a couple of very good points.

First, set a goal. You need to understand why you're doing this, and who you want to do it for, and how you want to do it. There's a difference between wanting to do tricks at the local magic club, or for yourself, or for the general public. Yep, I know that little statement will rankle some people, but, if you think about it, it's true.

How much to practice? It's determined totally by your goal. If your goal is to "learn" magic tricks for a general background, then practicing each one until it's perfect may not be as important as getting the background. Once you figure out what tricks you're going to perform, then focus on getting those perfect.

Which is why I said there's a difference between performing at the local magic club and for the general public. If you perform at the magic club (for the same audience all the time), you're going to need far more material that if you perform for the general public. And if you perform for yourself, then there's never enough material.

Two things I would add:

First, have fun with it, which is to say enjoy it. Practicing can be very dull if you don't think ahead to what you want to do with what you're practicing.

Second, don't lose sight of the forest for the trees. Don't just focus on the techniques. If you want to perform for the general public, you want to get out there and perform magic, not do tricks with fancy techniques. Put something of yourself into the performance: who are you, why are you doing this, what are you saying with it, why is it important to your audience, why should they care?

You should practice in a way that suits your learning tendencies. You should rehearse a great deal more than you practice.