On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

I was surprised--King can make me laugh out loud! Who knew? ( )

Just finished. I've never read a single Stephen King novel (almost impossible, I know), as his topics and his style are just not "my" "type" of lit. However, having seen this particular book highly recommended in several diverse places, I borrowed a friend's copy. Besides, even if King's "his" was not "mine," it's certainly true that King's is "most's" if only by evidence of the fact that he's made a gajillion dollars with his words.

I almost put the book down after the first twenty pages because there was nothing about writing at all, just a memoir, and I didn't particularly care at all for another "how I made it big" life-story. Luckily, I flipped forward and found that the book was divided into two parts and it was from the second section that I began to read.

King writes very comfortably and directly in his advice and I was surprised to find such a friendly disposition to him. His main point that he stresses throughout is that a writer needs to read and write (as opposed to Hemingway's advice that all one needs to be a writer is to SAY he's a writer). Sounds simple enough, I know, but King pushes that message along convincingly and without hubris. Read and Write. No matter the genre. Read and Write. And along the way, he dispells with the so often heard advice of "write what you know." How can you KNOW anything about an alien spacecraft? Write what you WANT and then fix the holes in your rewrite. King puts forth his opinion that good stories are not created, they are found, like a relic, and dug up. It's in the digging that decides what condition the treasure is unearthed.

The added bonus to the book is his description of the horrific accident that nearly killed him. In this case, King IS writing what he knows and it's very touching. And though I've never read a novel of his, the incident seems worthy of the movies I've seen that were created from his books.

Leaving aside the first half of the book and all the descriptiveness of the obese baby-sitter who used to sit on his head and fart, five stars. I may even go out and read one of his books now.

EDITED 4/20/2013 TO ADD:

Now that I've read more than a handful of King novels, I've decided that this book must be classified as a work of "fiction" because King literally follows none of his advice in this fine book except for maybe suggesting that you write A LOT, which he does, A LOT. ( )

I���ve been looking up books about writing and words and come across a few mentions of Stephen King���s memoir as worth reading. So I did. It���s interesting that he says he struggles with writing nonfiction much more than he does fiction but that I enjoy his nonfiction more. If that���s fair to say, since I read Danse Macabre once, in tenth grade, and now this.

My negative opinion of King���s writing stems partly from projected guilt. In tenth grade English we were to write a term paper on one author and I chose Stephen King, the adult author of whom I had read the most titles. My teacher���s sarcastic remarks throughout my sophmoric effort, which rose to a crescendo in the lowest grade I had ever earned, taught me as much as my innate distaste for cars and rabid St. Bernards that this author was beneath my (public) notice.

My opinion stems also from his subject matter but mostly from his style. Stuck in my brain from 1984 is a reviewer���s critique of a passage from, I think, ���Salem���s Lot: ���The face that was revealed was������ I���ve noticed such awkward constructions ever since ��� I reckon I should credit that teacher with awakening my inner editor ��� unless stronger elements float me over them. Stephen King is an imaginative raconteur but a narrative stylist or artisan of prose he is not. I don���t like being dropped.

The other piece of his nonfiction I like is the introduction to the expanded version of The Stand: the novel���s creation, condensation, and re-release, a story about writing. The expanded version itself I dislike not for its restored sections but because King���s attempts to update the story to the current year shattered the setting. The superflu and Randall Flagg were believable in his world; listening to 45s in 1986, for example, was not.

I criticize him for off-topic tangents. I do appreciate that irony. He addresses his audience as Constant Reader, which irritates me if too frequently done, and you know what that makes me, O My Friends and Brothers? A big fat hypocrite.

There are so many quotable bon mots from King about the craft of writing that it's easy to forget that he often doesn't follow his own advice.

http://thegrimreader.blogspot.com/2013/05/i-catch-up-on-bunch.html ( )

This is a combination memoir of a writer and a how-to-better by one of the top horror writers in English. He tells it straight. There's tons of great specific advice, from length of sentences to the myth of writers needing alcohol (King is a recovering alcoholic, and tells his own hard story), to where ideas come from. I've read it twice. ( )