My love affair with Stephen King started years before it should have, depending on your perspective. I read my Dad’s copies of his novels when other girls my age were sneaking around with Judy Blume, but we’ve discussed this already, right? With Pamela Ribon? I thought so. One particularly formative reading scene was in a bathtub and involved a loofah glove. All these years later, I can’t remember the title that held it, but I must have read those paragraphs eight or nine times trying to understand.
Then in my tumultuous college years King and I took a break so I could read Dean Koontz and eat my weight in pecan praline candies, individually wrapped. (In those days I was a waitress at El Chico in Shepherd Mall and spent at least a third of my tips on those luscious sugary things they sold at the register. To this day I cannot see a Dean Koontz paperback without craving a pecan praline.) But King was always there, always frightening and tantalizing me, always marveling me at his use of words and ideas. Of large-scale storytelling and mold-shattering imagination. For this reader there is no one like him. My love for fiction and my appetite for strong language (not just profanity, mind you, but truly strong communication) are owed in large part to him.
Over the next decade and a half I forgot then remembered again how much fun it is to play with words and how important it is to articulate your life experience. Fast forward to present day, albeit several years after On Writing was published. When I heard that the narrator of my adolescence had penned a non-fiction book about my favorite pastime, well, I was stoked. It’s the excitement a fledgling magician might feel to hear of a how-to book written by Chriss Angel. You mean he’s telling us how it’s done? Sign me up!
King calls On Writing, “a memoir of the craft.” Its 248 pages offer equal parts wisdom and inspiration by telling the story of King’s own life and evolving career. Truly, you guys, I loved every page. I just polished it off on this rainy Monday afternoon, and my mind is reeling. He covers the creative process, how to capture original ideas and soak in genuine inspiration, his thoughts on rewriting and editing, good tips on how to approach agents and publishers with professionalism, just a million great topics!
Her poem made me feel that I wasn’t alone in my belief that good writing can be simultaneously intoxicating and idea-driven. ~said of his future wife Tabitha during college
As if all that isn’t enough, the end of the book is a three page list of suggested reading. King is a big believer that in order to write well you must first have read well. Stay tuned for a posted list. I’d love to know how much of it all my friends have tackled.
Being swept away by a combination of great story and great writing- of being flattened, in fact- is part of every writer’s necessary formation. You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.
I could retell this stuff in my amateur ways all week long, but you need the original magic. If you are passionate about writing and receptive to the voice of experience, please find a copy of On Writing and dive in. Not only will you glean lots of expertise; you will thoroughly enjoy King’s intimate, first-person, purposeful conversation voice. It was transporting.
For now, could we discuss some things, you and me?
- How many books do you read per year, and how do you distribute your reading time? King reads between 70-80 per year, mostly fiction. He makes no apologies for indulging, and I love that.
- When you write, how often do you seek input from others? Have you heard of the tenet to write with the door closed, rewrite with it open? What do you think?
- Do you have an “Ideal Reader?” Please tell me about him or her.
- What’s you favorite Stephen King novel? Talk to me about its movie translation, if there is one.
- Where do you write best? In what room or physical setting? On what surface? With ink or a keyboard? I need to know these things. King talks about his writing desks a little, and I found it fascinating.
- Have you ever taken a writing class or attended a writing workshop? If so, how valuable were they?
I feel particularly fresh and flavorful to have studied this memoir just as summer is beginning. Time to write! Time to read even more so I can write better. I hope you join the fun.
“If you can do it for joy, you can do it forever.”
~Stephen King
XOXOXOXO
I would like to read every night and I do if I have a really great book. But usually I only get a about an hour a week.
I’ve only come to appreciate Steven King in the last few years when I watched The Running Man and then wanted to see how the well it followed the book (not even close). Last summer I read 11/22/63 and couldn’t stop thinking about it. I loved it. I really hope that it isn’t made into a movie…it rarely translates well. Dream Catcher is the perfect example. Worst. Movie. Ever. However, I could watch The Shining over and over. But then again, the made for TV version of The Shining (staring Steven Weber) was a travesty.
Insomnia is my favorite king novel, can’t imagine a movie pulling it off. On the other hand, I loved the Christine movie more than the book, even if he didn’t…..
Pet Cemetery. Freaked. Me. Out. Read it WAY too young. Maybe 12? Never saw the movie. I was too scarred from the book, I think.
It. Saw the movie with a boyfriend in high school. I obviously allowed myself to be conned into that one. I think that clown lives in the culvert in the field behind our house.
I am pretty dead set on not seeing the movie after I read the book. One, I don’t get emotionally involved in a movie like I do a book. Two, it is ALWAYS a disappointment. The only movie I will watch after reading the book is To Kill a Mockingbird. The casting of Scout and Atticus was so spot on that it was hard not to like the movie.
I guess I just prefer allowing my own mind to develop the characters and have time to think and ponder the book as I read rather than receive the whole chunk in 1.5 and have someone else dish the creativity instead of my own brain.
I obviously have several thoughts on this matter! This narrative is better than the verbal rant I gave you last week on the subject. Case in point, huh? 😛
P.S. There is a pet cemetery on highway 9. I think it is the setting for that book. Gives me the willies. Drive by at your own risk.
Oh yeah, let’s talk! I went through a Dean Koontz phase too, about the age you were when you read Stephen King. Did you read Lightning? I loved that book. And Twilight Eyes. When I write fiction, no one sees it until it’s taken its final form. That doesn’t mean I won’t be editing, but it has to have evolved into it’s final shape before I share it. I don’t have an ideal reader, but I know I was the ideal reader for Pam Houston’s “Contents May Have Shifted”. I GOT that book. I used to write only pen to paper. I love the feeling of pen on page. But sometimes I can turn off the editing brain a bit more easily on a keyboard–it’s faster and gives the doubting voice less time to sneak in. I switch off. I was a Creative Writing major in college. The classes were valuable in that they forced me to write, and the professors were mostly encouraging. (With the exception of one, who was just a dick to everyone). So I don’t have a favorite King novel, but I enjoyed the tv miniseries of ‘The Stand’. I did read some King short stories–one about meeting the devil in the woods, and is there one called “Sometimes They Come Back”?
The loofah glove scene you are trying to remember is actually a washcloth scene, and it’s from Pet Sematary, and it’s the same scene I was talking about in my interview!
–from the interview—
Stephen King’s Pet Sematary. That is true. There’s a HJ scene in that book so confusing it messed me up for years. (“Where in God’s name did you learn how to do that?” “Girl Scouts.”)