I took one creative writing course as an undergraduate and a whole year of writing courses as a postgraduate.  I earned an M.A. in writing, with distinction.  I learned nothing of any use.

That may sound arrogant, but it's simply an observation based on personal experience.  I write for a living.  Writing for a living has required me to develop a skill set that's completely unrelated to anything I was taught in university.

So if I were asked to teach a writing class, based on the concepts that have proven most useful to me as a writer, what I'd teach is this:

Principle #1.
If your writing is to have commercial value, ordinary people must be able to read it.

You can't count on ordinary people having read all the great works of Joyce and Woolf.  You can't count on them knowing what "trans-cultural diffusion" or "semiotics" mean.  You can't count on them reading past your first few sentences if you bore them.

Principle #2.
Your writing must interest your readers enough that they willingly spend a few minutes or hours of their day in your world.

There's a reason sensational journalism sells, and it's because people want to be grabbed.  They have short attention spans.  You've only got one shot at capturing their attention, and you've got to take it.  Challenging them and confusing them is a recipe for getting your books thrown in the bargain bin.

Principle #3.
Write the stuff that gets you paid.

In fact, if you have the chance, bag those university writing courses and take an internship at a local newspaper.  Be among other people who write for a living.  I know too many writers who take shelter in universities because no one else will pay them to write. I don't think they're ideal role models.

Even if you're doing nothing but contributing a column once a week, at least you get to see your words in print immediately.  You get paid for your efforts.  You learning to adapt your style to an editor's choosing.  You learning to write without thinking too hard or too much.  Those are skills that will help you in the commercial writing world.

With those three foundational principles out of the way, here are seven tips that I wish someone would have given me when I first started to write.  I learned them the hard way, and I still haven't mastered all of them.  I offer them to you in hopes you'll succeed much more quickly than I did.

#1. Live a full life.

A life well-lived, rich in relationships, adventures, hard times, and risk-taking, is fertile soil for great writing.

An immature life can be just as loquacious, but painful embarrassing in the process.  Remember: writing bares your soul to the world.  Who you are as a person, particularly if you have any degree of narcissism, will be revealed in what you write.  Make sure you can be proud of what you're communicating between the lines.

#2. Develop confidence.

Although confidence and competence often go hand-in-hand, there are arrogant writers with little to say, just as there are talented writers who'll never be published because they don't think their work is any good.

I was almost one of the latter.  There were advantages in being shy.  If I just wrote for myself, I could enjoy the pleasures of reading my babies myself and never have to expose them to a cruel, harsh world.  Submitting them for publication was like walking out of the house naked.  It left me bare.

Work on those shadows that keep you from writing.  Doubt is the enemy of creative productiveness.

#3. Consider what you want to do for a living.

Most writers want to write for a living, but they don't want to "compromise their principles" by writing garbage for the masses.

Get over it.

If you want to truly make your living as a wordsmith, it pays to be as versatile as possible.

Commercial writing teaches you the art of communicating clearly and simply without literary flourishes.  Plus, you learn speed.  You can't sit on a project for months and revise it until it matures like a fine wine.

Regardless, you're going to have to make a living while you write, and it's possible that writing for work will leave you no energy to write for pleasure.  Your best insights will be copyrighted by your company.  Do you really want that?

Perhaps the answer is to work at a simple job that leaves you lots of time for daydreaming.  Whatever you decide to do, make sure you've thought it through.

#4. Get support.

Sure, you can go at it alone, but I guarantee it will be 100% easier with a cheerleader.

Many of the literary world's best writers attained their brilliance because of the company they kept.  It helps to bat ideas around and share perspectives on the writing life.

It's a lonely pursuit, being a writer.  At the end of the day, it's just you and that blank screen.  You need to switch off the computer at some point and come home to humanity.

#5. Don't get intimidated.

It's easy to look at other brilliant pieces of writing and say, "That person is a genius. I wish I could write like that."

But all writing is subjective.  Someone else might read the same thing and think, "It's okay but not brilliant."  Who knows, they might prefer your work instead!

Write in the strongest voice you can muster, and try not to second-guess how other people will read it.  The more you doubt and second-guess yourself, the more muddled your work becomes.

I know this from personal experience.  I suffered for ages because what I wanted to write didn't fit neatly into any genre.  I thought it was immoral to base stories off personal experiences, even as I continued doing it.  I would picture myself and the people involved as characters rather than real people.  Externalizing an incident - pretending it didn't happen to me but rather my character - helped me deal with difficult experiences.  Ultimately, I wrote what I needed to write at the time.  I just wish I hadn't spent so much time suffering over it.

#6. Take every opportunity to write.

Write a journal, write letters, write a blog, write reports.  Make converting your thoughts into words on a page a habit. Think of it like eating: just a natural, pleasurable part of what it means to live.

We writers can often get sucked into spending our time in other ways, like reading (the writer's #1 addiction), surfing the net, or endlessly talking about ideas.

If you find yourself engaging in those activities as a substitute for writing, or a way to postpone doing any real work, you need to take steps to limit yourself.

For example, as a kid, I always had to have a book in my hand if I was traveling anywhere.  I wouldn't get in the car without one.  Then, as a young adult, I didn't have room in my suitcase for books, so I brought empty notebooks instead.  I converted my reading habit into a writing habit.  Now, any sort of traveling makes me want to get out a pen.  If I go for a coffee, I always take out a notebook and doodle a conversation with myself.  It's a habit. It's not hard.  It's just what you train your mind to do.

#7. Call yourself a writer.

It doesn't matter if you've never be published before.  It doesn't matter if your actual job is completely unrelated to writing. You have the right to call yourself a writer, because it's not just a profession: it's an identity.  It's how you see yourself.

You don't need anyone else's permission to call yourself a writer.  If someone asks you what you've published, and you say, "Nothing," that doesn't mean that you're not a writer.  Writing is the act of putting words down on a page.  You can put words down on a page regardless of whether you get them published or not.

Calling yourself a writer will free you to be what you always wanted to be.  Now get out there and do it.