If you want to learn how to become a better writer then 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. Plus, I have found that that quite a few of Stephen King’s books like Insomnia and The Long Walk 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.

Many of these tips can be useful no matter if you are a blogger, writing reports at work/in school or quietly spending your nights secretly working on that great novel that will astonish the world.

How to Become a Better Writer

1. Get to the point.

Don’t waste your reader’s time with too much back-story, long intros or longer anecdotes about your life.

Reduce the noise. Reduce the babbling. In “On Writing” King gets to his points quickly. Get to your point quickly too before your reader loses patience and moves on.

2. Write a draft. Then let it rest.

King recommends that you crank out a first draft and then put it in your drawer to let it rest. Now, how long you let your text rest may vary.

King puts his manuscripts away for several months before rereading and start the editing process.

I often let a post rest for a day or two before I start editing (as I’m sure many other bloggers do from time to time too).

This enables you to get out of the mindset you had when you wrote the draft and get a more detached and clear perspective on the text. It then becomes easier to edit, add and cut in a sometimes kinda ruthless way. The result is most often a better text.

3. Cut down your text.

When you revisit your text it’s time to kill your darlings and remove all the superfluous words and sentences. Removing will declutter your text and often get your message through with more clarity and a bigger emotional punch.

Don’t remove too much text though or you may achieve the opposite effects instead. King got the advice to cut down his texts by 10 percent from an old rejection-letter and has followed this advice for decades.

While editing my blog I’ve found that 10 percent seems to be a pretty good figure not just for mammoth-sized books.

4. Be relatable and honest.

King has an honest voice in his fiction and in his memoir. He tells it like it is and makes us relate to him and his characters.

Since King’s fiction often is of an odd kind with strange plots that seldom happen to normal people I think one of his strengths as a writer is being able to write relatable content anyway.

One of the keys to doing that is to have an honest voice and honest characters with both bad and good sides to them.

People we can relate to with all of their faults, passions, fears, weaknesses and good moments. King’s characters seem human. That creates a strong connection to the reader who starts caring about the characters.

Another key to being honest and relatable is keeping a conversational style. Keeping it simple and using language that isn’t unnecessarily complicated. Using the words that first come to mind.

5. Don’t care too much what others may think.

King admits to being needy about the emotional feedback he gets when he lets his wife read a new story for the first time.

He gets a kick out of hearing her laugh so she cries or just cry because something in manuscript really touched her.

But he has also gotten tons of mail over the years from people who confuse his sometimes nasty characters with the writer. Or just thinks he should wind up in hell. And King hasn’t always been a favourite among literary critics either.

But from what I gather he just sits down at his desk and keeps writing every morning anyway.

If you listen too much to your critics you won’t get much done. Your writing will probably become worse, less fun and reflect your own growing self-doubts. And criticism is often not even about you anyway.

6. Read a lot.

When you read you always pick up things. Sometimes it might be reminders about what you know you should be doing while you write.

Sometimes it’s some cool idea or just the world and atmosphere the writer is painting.

Sometimes it’s something totally new that makes your jaw drop. That one is my favourite.

And sometimes you learn what you should avoid doing. There are almost always lessons you can learn.

If you want to be a better writer you need to read a lot to get fresh input, broaden your horizons and deepen your knowledge. And to evolve you need to mix yourself up with new influences and see what happens.

How do you find time to read more?

You can cut down on other evening activities like watching TV-shows you don’t care for that much anyway.

Or, as King suggests, you can bring a book to waiting rooms, treadmills or toilets. I like to plug in an audiobook while I’m on the bus or walking somewhere.

7. Write a lot.

I’ve saved the most important tip for last. To become a better writer you probably – and not so surprisingly – need to write more.

Many of the best in different fields – Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods – have gone beyond normal limits of practise. And so they reap extraordinary results.

But what do you do when you don’t feel like writing? Waiting for inspiration can become a long wait.

One good way to get around this is to find an effective solution to reduce procrastination. You may have to try a few before you find one that works for you.

Another way is well, just to do it. And if you just get going your emotions changes a lot of the time and any initial resistance or laziness becomes fun and enthusiasm instead.

“For the ones who had a notion, a notion deep inside
That it ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive.”
– Badlands

A couple of days ago you could pick up Magic, the new album from Bruce Springsteen in your local record store.

I haven’t listened to Bruce that much these last few years, but I used to be really into his music.

I even saw him when he played in Gothenburg in 2003. It was pretty awesome.

In retrospect I think that some of the things that attracted me to Springsteen are the same things that got me interested in personal development. While a lot of the other music that I listened to at the time was kinda negative and whiny Bruce radiated positive energy and thoughts. It wasn’t depressing but it was also not optimistic in a cheesy way.

There was an incredible enthusiasm in the music and often a thought about how there is something more to life than just sitting around or trapping yourself in a boring and depressing rut.

And while sitting here, looking back and listening to the wonderful “Your own worst enemy” on repeat I thought about a few of the things I’ve learned from Bruce Springsteen.

1. Practise, practise, practise.

It’s tempting to believe that talent is just about everything. But of course we mostly just get to see really successful people at their big, crowning moments.

We don’t get a feel for, or seldom even a picture of or text about, all the time and energy they have put into creating and practising and refining a song in some dingy basement. Or the hours and years that have been spent hunched over a keyboard or a golf club.

Now I’m not saying that talent doesn’t play a part. But when I think about what I’ve read in biographies about Springsteen I’m reminded about how anyone who is really good at anything didn’t get there without lots and lots of work. Probably more work than some of the people that didn’t get so far. So maybe it isn’t always the talent that decides who is going to be really successful and who is not?

2. Give it all you got.

It’s really fun to see how much someone can give. Seeing someone just giving it all over and over, seeing how energetic and creative they can be, for so many years is really quite inspiring. Seeing Bruce Springsteen on stage is a good reminder that most of us probably have a whole lot more to give, a whole lot more potential hidden somewhere within.

…Even if you only have few fans.

It’s a bit easier to give it what you got when everyone is cheering you on. But you may not get the great response you’d like immediately.

I remember an anecdote from one of the biographies about Bruce when he and the E-Street Band is out on tour in the late 1970’s. In one town they discover that there are only something like 9 people and a dog at the concert. So do they try to sneak out early?

Nope.

I think Bruce says something about the audience having paid for the tickets with their hard-earned money just like everyone else. And then Bruce and the band plays for 4 hours. That’s not just a great and giving attitude. I also think that there is a joy and validation that comes from within that made Bruce and the band go about business as usual and give a great performance.

And I think this mindset is one of the things that propelled them towards a bigger breakthrough and larger audiences.

It’s easy to get stuck in a reactive frame of mind where you need the outside validation to keep going.

One way to not do that is to choose to do something you really like. Then your motivation will come from the inside rather than the reaction of others. This is for instance important if you’re a new blogger. Choosing the right topic to blog about can carry you through the first few months and help you write some really good stuff even though it might seem like only 9 people and a dog are reading your posts.

3. Be bold.

There are a whole lot of bold lines and emotions in Bruce’s music. And I think there is something to be said about boldness in any communication between people. When you keep at a normal tone you can get normal or sometimes little attention.

But when you go bold you start something bigger. You hook your listeners not just to your words, but you suck them into your world. You arouse all these different kinds of emotions in them. You create a stronger experience and a powerful connection. Being bold can of course be scary, but there are payoffs too.

4. Have fun.

This is something that sometimes gets lost in the mix. But one of the biggest lessons I have learned from Bruce is to relax and have fun. When you watch him and the E-Street Band on stage you realise how much fun they are having while creating and performing. And I think this is an important point too: together they create their own fun from the music. They don’t wait around for someone or something else to bring the fun and excitement. They produce it from within.

5. Emotions are contagious.

And that fun they create doesn’t stop within the group. The emotions, the energy from one person travels outward and onward to the next person. So enthusiasm is contagious. And so is optimism. And anger, boredom and apathy too.

I think one of the biggest keys to Bruce’s success is how he is able to convey his own emotions through your speakers (or on stage) and make you feel a lot too. As I said above in point #4, when you go bold with your emotions you create a strong connection to other people. So going bold in a positive emotional way is a good tip for creating a real connection and perhaps starting a good relationship.

6. You are the one holding yourself back.

As I’m listening to “Your own worst enemy” over and over again I’m reminded about one of the most important things I’ve learned over the last year. Most of the time it’s not someone else holding you back. It’s you.

If you go beyond the surface of a problem you often discover that what seemed like an external problem actually has a solution within you, within your thoughts and behaviour. And not saying this in a rah-rah motivational way. It’s just what I have discovered to be accurate a lot of the time.

When I started studying self-improvement I often thought about a few of the little catchphrases I have heard throughout life.

I thought about well, how kinda stupid they were.

How self-help catchphrases like “Just be more confident, man!” or “Just be yourself” were pretty worthless pieces of advice.

And I thought about Nike’s old catchphrase – “Just do it!” – that seems to pop up from time to time too. I thought: “Well, that’s easy to say, but it’s not so easy to just do”. So I concluded that it was just another catchphrase that people throw out because well, they have to say something.

Now I can see that there is actually some really useful advice in that catchphrase. So what changed? Well, I guess I figured out that you can’t really sit and think yourself out of something. And I figured out that I was thinking way too much. And that I identified closely with what I thought and felt.

Over thinking is quite a nifty trick that you can play on yourself. It tricks you into believing that you are on your way to solve your problem. It keeps you protected against perceived dangers out there in the world like failure, rejection and embarrassment by keeping your actions to a minimum. It feeds your ego and tells you that you know more than others, that you are a clever person that has things figured out.

I still think you should make a plan or at least have some thoughts about what you are about to do before you do it. But then, “Just do it!” becomes pretty useful. To me it’s a reminder to just go. To disregard what my thoughts are babbling about, how my emotions are trying to hold me back and just go and do what I need to do. It’s a reminder to focus on the present moment and forget about the rest.

Just do it and you’ll change your mind

Just doing it is for instance useful when you don’t feel like working out. Sometimes you don’t feel like going to the gym and can find 27 reasons not to. Then it’s useful to disregard your thoughts and just go. The same goes for writing posts for your blog. You can find a lot of reasons to watch TV and slack off instead. But in both cases I have found that if I just get started and focus on what I am doing I flip around mentally. What felt like a drag before I got started instead turns into positive feelings about what I’m doing.

Even if you want to do something, your mind will often find reasons not to. And your emotions may become negative in some way. Maybe you’ll feel nervous or lazy or bored. So you may think about it and do something to relieve your nervousness or pump up your motivation.

And maybe that works and helps you to take action. And sometimes it probably doesn’t. You still get wrapped up in the thoughts and emotions that are holding you back. So you think a bit more, perhaps to find a solution, perhaps to wallow in your thoughts and feelings. And often get nowhere.

What you are not

Just doing it is still not always easy to pull off. But I’ve found a few insights that makes it a whole lot easier than it once was.

You are not your thoughts.

Yeah, I thought this perspective sounded a bit weird when I first heard about it from Eckhart Tolle. But what I have realised is that I am not really my thoughts. I’m the one observing my thoughts. The thoughts are just something that moves through my mind. But it is not me. And when this close identification with your thoughts starts to break up you realize that they are often just ramblings that spin around and around most of the day.

You are not your emotions.

Not listening to your thoughts too much gets easier after a while. It can be harder not to listen to your emotions. But when the identification with your thoughts starts to loosen I have also felt how I’m less tied up in my emotions.

And the thing is, a million movies and TV-shows may tell you that you should follow your emotions. But your feelings aren’t really as reliable as pop-culture can make us think. Sometimes they just come from some outdated habitual thoughts that we established 10 years ago. Sometimes they come from how we act and move (since emotions work backward too).

And I guess you can put a whole lot of trust in your emotions once you have recalibrated them and weeded out most of your irrational fears, anger, not-so-useful social programming and negative habits of thought. Until then you may not want to have too much belief in what your emotions are telling you. And as I wrote above, after you just go and get started you often find that your emotions can change quickly and drastically.

This is not to say that your thoughts or emotions are worthless. But sometimes – and you can often tell when – they are mostly just holding you back. And if you are less identified with them and less wrapped up in them it becomes easier to act in spite of what they are suggesting that you should do.

This can be helpful if you want to establish a new habit. You’ll improve faster and stick to your new habit until it sticks to you if you don’t fold as quickly as your mind gets over the initial enthusiasm and starts to invent reasons for you to give up, excuses for you to fail (since success can be scary) or starts producing all kinds of negative and/or protective emotions.

And the fun thing about this is that it’s kinda liberating. You realise that you don’t have to obey or act in accordance with your thought loops or emotions. It’s not the police, your mom and dad or teacher. You can just move and go do it. And so you take control of your thoughts and emotions instead of other way around.

What do you want?

A great job?

A fulfilling relationship?

Go sailing around the Pacific for a few years in your very own luxurious boat?

Or just to get along better with yourself?

Perhaps you want one of more of those things. But beneath those and many common wishes, if you take it a step further, often lies a wish to find happiness.

One good way to find a few useful, life-improving and time-tested tips is to look back. To look way back through history. To find ideas that have arisen in minds over and over the last few thousand years.

Here are seven such ideas about how you can find happiness. Maybe you’ll find them helpful.

And if you want to learn much more about inner happiness then have a look at my 12-week Self-Esteem Course.

1. You choose.

How your view yourself and your world are conscious choices and habits. The lens you choose to view everything through determines how you will interpret what is happening. And from your interpretation you act. And all of this becomes your life.

You can choose to find happiness in small, everyday things. You can choose to interpret what happens in a positive way. Or in a negative way.

And your choices controls much of how much happiness your will find and create in your life.

2. Focus on the present, not yesterday or tomorrow.

You only have now. And now. And now.

Yesterday is a memory and you cannot change it. Tomorrow is just a fantasy in your mind right now.

So live more in the now, focus on the present moment and today. Think and worry less about yesterday and tomorrow.

Otherwise you might miss a great deal of happiness that is available to you right now.

3. Don’t forget to be grateful.

One of the simplest and quickest ways to turn a negative and sour mood into a more positive one is to be grateful.

A few things you can feel gratitude for are for instance: The sunshine and the weather. Your roof. Your health. A good TV-show, a movie or a song. Your friends, family, co-workers and just about anyone walking down the street.

Just try if for a minute and see how it changes how you feel. And it’s a win/win solution.

You feel great because you are grateful about your world and the people you are grateful for feel great too because they feel appreciated. So don’t forget about gratitude or you may forget about the happiness that is already in your life.

4. Help someone else find happiness.

This is certainly one of the most popular ideas I’ve found about happiness. And it might sound cliched and empty. But it works very well.

When you make someone else happy – by, for example, helping them with something – you can sense, see, feel and hear it. And that happy feeling flows back to you. And then, if you’d like, you can boost you own ego by thinking something like: “Wow, I really made him/her happy!”

And since the Law of Reciprocity is strong there is another upside. People will feel like giving back to you. Or they might feel like helping/sharing it with someone else.

And so the two – or more – of you keep spreading the happiness.

5. Get rid of a couple of your less valuable desires.

If you want less instead of more, more, more then your desires are more likely to be fulfilled. And if you throw away a few of those desires that you may not really want or need that much anyway you’ll probably start to feel less stressed and worried.

This is a calmer and better place to be to enjoy your day (tip #2) and to take the time discover the happiness that is already in your life (tip #3).

6. Do what you like to do.

A pretty obvious one.

But it’s still easy to trap yourself into doing what you don’t want to for many, many hours. And seldom do what you really love to do.

And I guess this one ties into tip #1. You may not be able to choose to do what you want to do right now. Or for many hours each day or week.

But you almost always have a choice to do more of what you really want to do. There is always time. Or time you can free up.

You have a choice.

7. Or at least do something.

One of the best ways to not find happiness is just to hold yourself back and do nothing.

Seldom show up.

Paralyze yourself through over analysis.

It’s not always easy to take action, it can be scary and hard and difficult. But if you don’t take action you’ll be missing out on a lot. Including many moments, people and experiences that can bring you a lot of happiness.

Mornings can be hectic.

There are a whole bunch of things that need be done in little time.

Especially if you turned over in bed and hit snooze several times after the alarm-bell rang.

The rest of day can also be hectic at times.

But if you take some time tonight to prepare you can make tomorrow at least a little easier, more exciting and smoother to handle.

1. Plan your day.

Use the 80/20 rule or some other way to find your most important tasks for tomorrow. Write them down in order of importance so they don’t slip your mind and get lost in all the busywork of tomorrow. If possible, start with most important task first thing in the morning. This will often raise your productivity plus self-confidence and set the mood for the rest of the day.

2. Visualize your day.

Take a few minutes in your most comfy chair or in bed. Close your eyes and visualize how well everything will go tomorrow. How good your breakfast will taste, how easily you’ll get to work (or handle delays if there are any), how you will be effective and not get stuck in busywork in school or at work. And so on. And make sure you don’t just see it in your mind but also hear and feel it. Make it come alive as much as possible.

This may sound a bit corny but visualizing a good next day can really change your mood, heighten your performance and make tasks, meetings and your whole day run smoother. I have found that it is quite a bit of an improvement compared to if you do what a lot of us do; visualizing tomorrow but in a negative way.

Everything that will happen tomorrow may not be as fun as your weekend was. But how you think about your day – what attitude and perspective you choose – certainly changes how you interpret and create it.

3. Make your lunch.

Pack the leftovers of your dinner in a container and put it in the fridge. Just don’t forget to put it in your bag tomorrow. You may even want make an extra serving so you can quickly heat up dinner when you get home tomorrow. Doing this tonight will save you a bit of time and possibly a bit of money.

4. Pack your bag.

This very simple habit can alleviate quite a bit of stress in the morning. If you pack your bag tonight you don’t have run around in your house half panicked tomorrow looking for your books or some important papers.

On a related note, it’s also useful to check that your keys are hanging where they should hang before you go to bed. Looking for them in the morning – just as your bus is leaving – can create unnecessary stress. Keeping a place where you always hang or put them is an easy way to avoid a lot of keysearches early in the day.

5. Invest in yourself.

Cut out a bit of TV. Do a bit of reading instead. Learn something you can have use for. Take an evening class, read a self-improvement book, learn a language or a dance. Or go out running or exercising in some other way. This might not change much for tomorrow. But if you have an hour or so over every other night you can make some real progress and in the longer run change your future tomorrows a whole lot.

6. Journal.

Review your day and get what is on your mind out on virtual or tree-based paper. This can bring calmness and clarity to your mind. Journaling can also give you more structure in life and is a way to find focus and to think things through in a better way. It can help you to find solutions and opportunities in your challenges.

7. Ask gratitude questions.

If you don’t have the time for this little exercise in the morning or want to end your day on a positive note give it a try tonight.

Here’s what you do; ask yourself five empowering three-part questions in this way:

What am I ______ about in my life right now?

What about it makes me _______?

How does it make me feel?

Put in your own value in the blank space. For instance, a couple of my questions are: What am I happy about in my life right now? What am I excited about in my life right now?

It’s important that you really feel how it makes you feel. When I think about the last part about what makes me happy right now I really feel it. These questions are great because:

a) the way they are set up makes you recognize things you take for granted
b) and then they really get you to feel those positive feelings.

8. Relax.

These last two tips are in the super obvious category. But reminders are good from time to time. And you can’t get much done if you never get any rest and revitalization. Well, you can for a while but soon you’ll start to feel run down, stressed out and fill up with all kinds of negative emotions.

So find a way to relax that suits you. Meditate in one way or another. Take a warm bath. Take a walk in the woods. Listen to relaxing music. Or just catch up on sleep.

9. Do something fun and exciting.

Do something more active than watching TV-shows you aren’t that fond of anyway (just watch the ones you really like). Don’t just get stuck in a boring rut that keeps your mood low and level. It’s important to just find something fun and exciting to do. Something that can cheer you up. Something that can make you feel better as the alarm clock goes off tomorrow morning.