On Writing by Stephen KIng

"What I don't understand, Stevie," she said, "is why you'd write junk like this in the first place.  You're talented.  Why do you want to waste your abilities?"  She had rolled up a copy of V.I.B. #1 and was brandishing it at me the way a person might brandish a rolled-up newspaper at a dog that has piddled on the rug.  She waited for me to answer--but I had no answer to give.  I was ashamed.  I have spent a good many years since--too many, I think--being ashamed about what I write.  I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction and poetry has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent.  If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, i suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all.  I'm not editorializing, just trying to give you the facts as I see them.

The great charm of Stephen King's On Writing, much like Ann Lamott's Bird by Bird, is that it feels like it's been written by a real person.  And a real person of no tremendous insight or brilliance.  I don't mean that as a slight against King, who clearly possesses more than an equal share of talent.  But the moments of greatest wisdom about writing clearly come from a lifetime of hard work and dedication, of trying and failing over and over again.  Much of the book is autobiographical, a memoir in short, and sometimes it seems only tangentially related to writing, as with King's account of his own alcoholism.  King wants to puncture the myth of the drunk genius, to show that his writing was actually impeded by his drinking, not enhanced by it, but the overall effect is mostly the impression that Stephen King, millionaire superstar writer, is a pretty normal guy with normal flaws and failings.

Some of his advice on writing is laughably unhelpful.  For example, he suggests that you ought to able to write the first draft of a 180,000 word novel in about three months.  The math is simple: write two thousand words a day, every day.  He even wonders what those authors who only write one book in their lives are doing with the rest of their time.  But, of course, not all chunks of two thousand words are created equal, and few of us are going to be able to reproduce Stephen King's level of dedication, even as he protests that there are those who are much more prolific than he is.  HE writes while listening to "AC/DC, Guns 'n Roses, and Metallica," which sounds impossible to me.  There is also some general skepticism of writing classes in general, and a conviction, shared by most other writing guides, that some people just don't have the goods.  (Which, while it might be true, is not helpful for the teenagers in my creative writing class.)

But a lot of the advice is really terrific, and delivered in a blunt, conversational style that makes it hard to argue with.  For my purposes it's nice to see some of the things that I have said to my students emphasized and echoed, and usually in better, more convincing language:

If I had a nickel for every person who ever told me he/she wanted to become a writer but "didn't have time to read," I could buy myself a pretty good steak dinner.  Can I be blunt on this subject?  If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write.  Simple as that.

This isn't the Ouija board or the spirit-world we're talking about here, but just another job like laying pipe or driving long-haul trucks.  Your job is to make sure the muse knows where you're going to be every day from nine 'til noon or seven 'til three.  If he does know, I assure you that sooner or later, he'll start showing up, chomping his cigar and making his magic.

Plenty of writers resist this idea.  They feel like revising a story according to the likes and dislikes of an audience is somehow akin to prostitution.  If you really feel that way, I won't try to change your mind.  You'll save on charges at Copy Cop, too, because you won't have to show anyone your story in the first place.  In fact (he said snottily), if you really feel that way, why bother to publish at all?  Just finish your books and then pop them in the safe-deposit box, as J. D. Salinger is reputed to have been doing in his later years.

Other things that I think are extremely helpful about On Writing are: King is pretty candid as to which of his novels he thinks turned out not to be that good.  What an amazing thing, to hear a novelist say that about his own work!  He also includes two brief pieces of writing at the end: an original and an edited version of his story "1408."  That's bold, I think, not just to talk about the process, but to show it.

The last section of the book is an autobiographical account of how, in the middle of writing On Writing, King was hit by a car while taking a walk near his house in rural Maine and nearly died.  A half-dozen surgeries, learning to walk, to sit, to write again--it's an account as harrowing as any in his horror novels.  "Writing did not save my life," King writes at the end, "Dr. David Brown's skill and my wife's loving care did that--but it has continued to do what it always has done: it makes my life a brighter and more pleasant place."