Stephen King’s 7 Best Writing Tips Can Reinvigorate All Your Creative Endeavors

Classics remain so because their wisdom keeps giving

There is a single book that planted the seeds of a life-long love of writing in me— Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.

It was also the only book consistently taught as part of my highschool & university curriculums on creative writing without exception. A universally beloved manual on writing as a refined art form — capable of garnering immense influence.

This perspective is one you’ll need, if you want to stand out in an age of writers filling the internet with all brains and no heart.

“Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.”

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Writing should be like opening your psyche’s innards to the page in front of you.

It’s exponentially more intimate and vulnerable than any other kind of nakedness; you’re exposing and infusing your very being into the page.

If you don’t do so, you risk layers and layers of manufactured artifice creeping up.

Remember: writing is for intimate expression, editing is for rational curation.

They’re very different processes.

“In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it ‘got boring,’ the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling.”

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Writing is like keeping a fire alive. Get mesmerized by the flames, and you forget to add fuel.

The magic of writing comes when it carries intense and transformative energy, through the transmitter of every single word, pause, and white space.

Keep the magic alive, by focusing on the pulsation of meaningful vibrations down to the last syllable.

Like writing music, not a math problem!

“Words create sentences; sentences create paragraphs; sometimes paragraphs quicken and begin to breathe.”

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Prose and poetry are not so distinct and separate.

Every word that is placed on a page carries its own cadence, and the way these build comprises the magic of writing. Sentences are inhalations, paragraphs are the body that contains this life force, and endings are exhalations.

Make each breath count.

“If you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects.

If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway.”

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This is the toughest challenge most writers face.

We are conditioned to be polite, pleasing and presentable at every level of social life.

But writing happens away from the pressure to conform. Bringing that stress into the process can only hold it back!

Keep in mind that as a member of society, you’ve already absorbed the conditioning to not be rude at very subconscious levels. There’s no need for self-censorship — not until the editing stage.

“Writing is not life, but I think that sometimes it can be a way back to life.”

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Life experience is the fuel that creates great writing.

Yet there is a mysterious reservoir within each of us that, if prodded enough, can burst into beauty.

Learning to appreciate language the same way as the notes of a musical instrument or the colors of a paint palette is the beginning of a life-infused practice of writing.

“When you write a book, you spend day after day scanning and identifying the trees.

When you’re done, you have to step back and look at the forest.”

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Writing is a bit like seeing the future. Seeing ideas manifest into language, before they appear concretely to your mind.

The way things are being laid down must be pleasing to the psyche of a reader; the big picture is something built with these foundations!

Looking at the forest of words is crucial because some trees are weak, parasitic, or deadweight.

Keep the forest of ideas alive!

“You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.”

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The amount of mediocrity we consume has probably never been higher in any era of human history.

• In “classical” ages of civilization, people would dedicate their whole lives to a single craft.
• Today, you take an online workshop and begin calling yourself a professional to market yourself confidently.

It’s important to walk the talk. Just as a nutritionist controls what they take into their body, know that every piece of information you consume has an energy frequency. You’re trying to build the best — so you can put out the same.

Consume with foresight.

In Summary

Write as an act of intimacy. Edit as an act of rationality. Don’t lose the fire of writing by getting distracted by its flames.

Harmonize all the building blocks that make up your writing practice. Be bold and unapologetic; stand out bravely.

Your life should support your writing, and your writings should elucidate the truth of life.

Because without this form of expression as something special, even among all art forms — life loses the color that gives coherency and purpose.

Words matter not because of what they say, but because of all that’s left unsaid. And writing well means the full expression of this magnitude !