Stephen King’s Top 7 Tips for Becoming a Better Writer If you want to learn how to write better where do you go? Well, you can take a creative writing course. Or read the books, biographies and studies of men and women hailed as literary geniuses throughout history. For today, I’ve chosen to take some advice from one the most popular fiction writers of the last few decades: Stephen King. Now, great sales figures aren’t always an indication of greatness in any field. But it probably means that the creator knows what s/he is doing and what works. , The Long Walk or The Running Man – are really good reads (and sometimes even greater films I’ve learned/been reminded about these seven tips by rereading King’s memoir/how-to-write book On Writing – highly recommended for many good insights into writing and a writer’s life – and by a whole bunch of his novels I’ve sacrificed sleep to keep on reading. 1. Don’t waste your reader’s time with too much back-story, long intros or longer anecdotes about your life. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. How do you find time to read more?
How to Write First Thing in the Morning Photo courtesy of Peter Gene As I write these words, it’s a little after 4:00 a.m. and my wife and kids are sleeping. The house is dark and quiet, with no TV or music playing, no conversation to distract the voice in my head. It’s the perfect writing environment, for me at least. When we write, we are speaking with a voice in our heads, and that voice is communicated through our fingertips and onto paper or the digital whitespace. That’s why the morning has always been my favorite time to write, before anyone awakes, before traffic starts up or the chickens start making crowing noises. Why Write So Early? But here’s why “first thing in the morning” works for me (and that doesn’t have to be 4:00 a.m. — it can be whenever you awake): It’s quiet. Tips for Writing Early in the Morning So you want to write in the morning … but need some suggestions? Wake earlier. If you liked this article, please share it on del.icio.us or on Digg.
How to Schedule Your Writing Like a Professional Writer October 15th, 2007 · 89 comments [UPDATE: 2/18/08] Welcome new readers! If this is your first time here, Study Hacks is a blog that focuses on hacks to help you do better at college (and in life) while spending less time. If you like this article, you might also like related productivity posts on: accomplishing more by doing less, using a productivity-free day, implementing a Sunday ritual, and calculating your churn rate. If you like what you see, consider subscribing to the blog’s RSS feed. The Pain of Writing Students hate paper writing. The solution is simple. How Professional Writers Write Professional writers spend most days of their adult lives writing. With this in mind, I dug up interviews with the following masters of long form non-fiction: Ted ConoverRichard Ben Cramer,Jonathan HarrJon KrakauerMichael LewisSusan OrleanRichard PrestonEric SchlosserGay TaleseCalvin Trillin. I went through each interview extracting any discussions about the writer’s habits. Observations… Related Posts
The Proofreader’s Marks Have you ever looked at a paper that your teacher handed you back, with her scribbles in red ink all over the page asking you to revise, and you didn’t have a clue what she meant? You’re seeing brackets and squigglies and letters with circles around them–it’s obvious she has a system–but it just looks like jibberish? If she’s a trained writer/editor, there’s a good chance she was using the Proofreader’s Marks. And, if you didn’t understand them, there’s a good chance you never learned them. All writers and editors ought to be familiar with the Chicago Manual of Style’s Proofreader’s Marks. To purchase a 20×30 poster, please visit the online store.
Top 10 Tips for Better Writing