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“You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair–the sense that you can never completely put on the page what’s in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page.” - Stephen King, On Writing

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Amy Palko of Lives Less Ordinary and Textual Tangents. Amy is writing her thesis paper on Stephen King and has spent quite some time studying him.

What writing lessons can Stephen King teach us?

You’d think after many years studying King’s fiction and career I’d be well placed to answer. But as I chased round my mind for a list I could share with you here, it finally dawned on me that all other lessons disintegrate, like so many vampires caught out by the morning sun, when compared with the one key lesson I’ve learned and continue to practice daily.

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“Writing, when properly managed, (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation.” - Laurence Sterne

While I don’t claim to be the world’s greatest writer, one of my strengths as a writer is the ability to write in a fairly conversational style.

I might not write like everyone talks, but I write like I talk, and I think it creates a more welcoming style of writing.

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“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” - Jack London

No matter how much you love writing, there will always be days when you need inspiration from one muse or another.

In fact, I would argue that inspiration is not just a desirable thing, it’s an integral part of the writing process.

Every writer needs inspiration to produce inspired writing. And sometimes, it can come from the unlikeliest sources.

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Editor’s note: This guest post is from FekketCantenel, dreaded she-raptor moderator from the Zen Habits forums.

I have yet to read an all-dialog novel. In fiction, narration is critical for establishing many elements, including scenery, character appearance, and action.

Despite (or perhaps because of) its importance, smooth narration is one of the hardest skills for an aspiring writer to master. It’s easy to get lost in long, flowery paragraphs of clever prose stuffed with adjectives, adverbs, undecipherable in-jokes, and repetition.

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Editor’s note: This guest post is from Mary Jaksch of the blog Goodlife Zen.

I love reading. But not just anything. Some writers arrest me on the spot and shackle me to their page. But others fail to keep my attention: I soon start playing with the cat or surf off to other sites.

Our readers are exactly like that. Their attention is fickle and they will wander off if we don’t grab them with our words.

That’s why it’s important to seize them from the moment they hit the page and get them to read our stuff in one gulp. In the following five steps I’ll show you how to glue readers to your page, whether you’re writing a blog post, an article, or a book.

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