Famous Author Stephen King's 5 Basic Rules for Success

Stephen King is the author of the greatest horror and thriller books of all time, and undoubtedly one of the best in his business. Many of his books have been brought to the big screen, many of them turned into comics.

He is also one of the most prolific and disciplined writers. Let’s take a look at 5 rules of success, compiled from Stephen King’s own interviews.

1) Love what you do.

In an interview with George RR Martin and Stephen King, Martin asked King, “How do you write so many books so fast?” asks the question. The answer lies in Stephen King’s discipline.

King states that he writes whenever he has the opportunity and that writing is a game for him.

“I could write for free if I didn’t make any money from this work.”

Although at the end she says “…but I like to write to make money”, let’s focus on her love for what she does.

2) Chase new ideas.

“Don’t think that all the ideas in the world have been found. The egg was discovered, then the methods of cooking the egg were discovered. There is no limit to it.”

3) Try to love every process you go through.

“Writing a novel is like lighting a campfire in a dark place. The characters in the novel are small pieces of wood, and when they all come together in a small fire, a big campfire emerges. This fire is the novel itself. If you don’t do this process right, you can’t make the fire grow. “

No matter what business you are dealing with, you may not get anywhere by focusing only on the result of your work. King says focusing solely on the outcome is like thinking about dessert from the start of a meal. Don’t miss the main course.

4) Don’t be afraid of rejection, learn from every rejection.

While King’s book The Shining was adapted for the big screen, his own screenplay was rejected by Stanley Kubrick, saying it did not match what Kubrick had in mind. King says that after thousands of rejections, the incident neither upset nor angered him.

“You have to get used to being rejected. Being rejected is part of the game. The important thing is to try to learn from them all.”

5) Don’t wait for ideas to come to you, create your own process.

“They ask me where ideas come from. Ideas don’t come from somewhere, I go to them. All I know is I sit down and turn on my typewriter; the first 10 minutes are as gruesome as smelling a dead fish. Then I get carried away and this process becomes a new adventure for me.”

If Stephen King, one of the world’s most prolific writers, had waited for ideas to come to him, he probably wouldn’t have been able to produce 204 gripping works. Don’t wait for the idea to come. Go and get it.