1. “Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and get it right — as right as you can, anyway — it belongs to anyone who wants to read it. Or criticize it.”—Stephen King

2. Using pop culture in your stories is okay

3. Don’t take yourself too seriously but take your craft seriously

4. All the story ideas in your head can go somewhere (with almost fifty novels published and countless more short stories, King has shown that he has a lot of story ideas)

5. Be open to trying new methods of publishing (serial novels, special editions, e-books)

6. Not every book is going to be a winner, even by your own estimation. Don’t let that slow you down. Keep learning. Keep growing. 

7. Create your own universe where characters and events exist in multiple books.

8. Never talk down to your readers—bond with them as if they’re sitting across the table from you.

9. Success shouldn’t change your productivity or yourself—it should simply open doors for you to create more.

10. “The 3 types of terror: The Gross-out: the sight of a severed head tumbling down a flight of stairs, it’s when the lights go out and something green and slimy splatters against your arm. The Horror: the unnatural, spiders the size of bears, the dead waking up and walking around, it’s when the lights go out and something with claws grabs you by the arm. And the last and worse one: Terror, when you come home and notice everything you own had been taken away and replaced by an exact substitute. It’s when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there’s nothing there…”–Stephen King