Don't worry about reading lots of chess books and learning all the theory or openings (other than the basics, that is). The main things you should do are:
1] Develop a good thought process and general approach to the game. NM Dan Heisman has an excellent series of articles ('The Thinking Cap', 'Novice Nook' and others). Find his stuff and study it well.
2] Tactics, tactics, tactics! chesstempo.com is my favourite place for tactics problems. Make an account there and play regularly; you'll see a huge and rapid improvement in your game. There are many great books that cover this ground as well.
3] Play regularly at reasonably slow time controls (necessary to utilize and internalize the proper thought process), mainly against players who are slightly better than you are. FICS or ICC are great places to play online (humans, unlike chess engines, will not allow you to take back your mistakes, which tends to focus the mind!).
4] Analyze your games. Ideally you'll have a stronger human to help you with this, otherwise get a strong chess engine. Identify your major tactical blunders and remember the patterns so you can avoid making the same mistakes in future.
5] Go through annotated games of the strongest grandmasters. There are lots of collections available. Good ones for starters are Morphy, Marshall, Spielmann, Alekhine, Tal and Kasparov (highly tactical players).
6] You can also find GM games where one player resigned. Take the winning side and finish the game against a chess engine on its highest strength. See if you can convert the win.
7] Now you can read a bit more about strategy, openings, etc. Try to play openings that lead to open, tactical positions (forget about whatever the latest fashions amongst grandmasters are). Excellent choices are the various gambits, and ancient openings like the Spanish, Italian, etc.
1] Develop a good thought process and general approach to the game. NM Dan Heisman has an excellent series of articles ('The Thinking Cap', 'Novice Nook' and others). Find his stuff and study it well.
2] Tactics, tactics, tactics! chesstempo.com is my favourite place for tactics problems. Make an account there and play regularly; you'll see a huge and rapid improvement in your game. There are many great books that cover this ground as well.
3] Play regularly at reasonably slow time controls (necessary to utilize and internalize the proper thought process), mainly against players who are slightly better than you are. FICS or ICC are great places to play online (humans, unlike chess engines, will not allow you to take back your mistakes, which tends to focus the mind!).
4] Analyze your games. Ideally you'll have a stronger human to help you with this, otherwise get a strong chess engine. Identify your major tactical blunders and remember the patterns so you can avoid making the same mistakes in future.
5] Go through annotated games of the strongest grandmasters. There are lots of collections available. Good ones for starters are Morphy, Marshall, Spielmann, Alekhine, Tal and Kasparov (highly tactical players).
6] You can also find GM games where one player resigned. Take the winning side and finish the game against a chess engine on its highest strength. See if you can convert the win.
7] Now you can read a bit more about strategy, openings, etc. Try to play openings that lead to open, tactical positions (forget about whatever the latest fashions amongst grandmasters are). Excellent choices are the various gambits, and ancient openings like the Spanish, Italian, etc.
Good luck and have fun!