By: Stephen King Publisher: Pocket Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Pocket Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 288 Publication Date: June 01, 2001 Release Date: May 22, 2001
Amazon.com: Short and snappy as it is, Stephen King's On Writing really contains two books: a fondly sardonic autobiography and a tough-love lesson for aspiring novelists. The memoir is terrific stuff, a vivid description of how a writer grew out of a misbehaving kid. You're right there with the young author as he's tormented by poison ivy, gas-passing babysitters, uptight schoolmarms, and a laundry job nastier than Jack London's. It's a ripping yarn that casts a sharp light on his fiction. This was a child who dug Yvette Vickers from Attack of the Giant Leeches, not Sandra Dee. "I wanted monsters that ate whole cities, radioactive corpses that came out of the ocean and ate surfers, and girls in black bras who looked like trailer trash." But massive reading on all literary levels was a craving just as crucial, and soon King was the published author of "I Was a Teen-Age Graverobber." As a young adult raising a family in a trailer, King started a story inspired by his stint as a janitor cleaning a high-school girls locker room. He crumpled it up, but his writer wife retrieved it from the trash, and using her advice about the girl milieu and his own memories of two reviled teenage classmates who died young, he came up with Carrie. King gives us lots of revelations about his life and work. The kidnapper character in Misery, the mind-possessing monsters in The Tommyknockers, and the haunting of the blocked writer in The Shining symbolized his cocaine and booze addiction (overcome thanks to his wife's intervention, which he describes). "There's one novel, Cujo, that I barely remember writing."
King also evokes his college days and his recovery from the van crash that nearly killed him, but the focus is always on what it all means to the craft. He gives you a whole writer's "tool kit": a reading list, writing assignments, a corrected story, and nuts-and-bolts advice on dollars and cents, plot and character, the basic building block of the paragraph, and literary models. He shows what you can learn from H.P. Lovecraft's arcane vocabulary, Hemingway's leanness, Grisham's authenticity, Richard Dooling's artful obscenity, Jonathan Kellerman's sentence fragments. He explains why Hart's War is a great story marred by a tin ear for dialogue, and how Elmore Leonard's Be Cool could be the antidote.
King isn't just a writer, he's a true teacher. --Tim Appelo
Product Description: "Long live the King," hailed Entertainment Weekly upon the publication of Stephen King's On Writing. Part memoir, part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writer's craft, comprising the basic tools of the trade every writer must have. King's advice is grounded in his vivid memories from childhood through his emergence as a writer, from his struggling early career to his widely reported, near-fatal accident in 1999 -- and how the inextricable link between writing and living spurred his recovery. Brilliantly structured, friendly and inspiring, On Writing will empower and entertain everyone who reads it -- fans, writers, and anyone who loves a great story well told.
Download Description: For years I dreamed of having the sort of massive oak slab that would dominate a room.... In 1981 I got the one I wanted and placed it in the middle of a spacious, skylighted study in the rear of the house. For six years I sat behind that desk either drunk or wrecked out of my mind.... A year or two after I sobered up, I got rid of that monstrosity and put in a living-room suite where it had been....In the early nineties, before they moved on to their own lives, my kids sometimes came up in the evening to watch a basketball game or a movie and eat pizza....I got another desk -- it's handmade, beautiful, and half the size of the T. rex desk. I put it at the far west end of the office, in a corner under the eave....I'm sitting under it now, a fifty-three-year-old man with bad eyes, a gimp leg, and no hangover. I'm doing what I know how to do, and as well as I know how to do it. I came through all the stuff I told you about ... and now I'm going to tell you as much as I can about the job.... It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn't in the middle of the room. Life isn't a support-system for art. It's the other way around. --
A Little Hypocritical I must say I found Mr. King's advice a little telling. He says don't use adverbs ... but they are liberal in all his work.
He says get to the point with little description ... but used forty pages to describe a town in one novel. A town...
But, he is our most successful writer so go figure.
Can't recommend it and that stinks.
Wolfe
On Writing, Inspiration, and Practical Advice Stephen King manages to create the most interesting and inspiring writing advice book I've had the pleasure of reading. It's part memoir and part practical writing instruction. He takes the reader on a journey through his own life - what made him the writer he is, the nuggets and kernels of his earliest creativity, and both his failures and successes.
Through telling his own story he leads you comfortably along until he gets to the basics of writing. Throwing out traditional English Composition coursework he gets down and dirty with what makes a sentence, what style is and how to apply it, and when, where and how to write. You can't help (well, I couldn't) but to be inspired and want to jump right out there and start writing after reading his stories.
This is a must-read for every would-be writer as well as every Stephen King fan.
- CV Rick, April 2008
Excellent resource for writers I'd heard a lot of talk about this book being the eminent book for a developing writer to read. It did not live up to the hype initially, but redeemed itself in the end.
I enjoyed the conversational tone King took in this book. Reading it is like reading a letter from an old friend. He does a great job of describing his early writing life and imparting the urgency for writing that all young authors hope to have.
The advice given in the latter section is invaluable. Most of it is stuff that most writers have heard ad nauseum, but King puts it all succinctly. He makes the reader believe that writing is a gift that we have. It is up to us to put in the work and time to make ourselves better. It is up to us to improve our craft.
This book left me very hopeful for my writing future. Thank you, Stephen King.
Here's why 575 people gave this book 5 stars while 8 people gave it 1 star. It is true that the first fifth of this book is Stephen King's rambling, self-indulgent monologue about what a tough life he had as a youth. It is also true that King:
* Uses this book as a vehicle to wreak literary revenge on the man who nearly killed him because he was too busy watching his Rottweiler to watch where he was driving his van--he also does this in one of the last books of his Dark Tower series.
* Tells readers that because of the pompous nature of the literary critics, the full talent of popular authors such as he (King) is never recognized until they are dead. Here he groups himself with Raymond Chandler.
* Tells the world what a hard knocks life he had as a youth.
* Launches snide attacks on other authors--Danielle Steel and John Katzenbach at the top of the list.
* Uses the book as a confessional about his drug and drinking problems he experienced along with his success.
and
* Indulges in endless self-promotion.
It is also true that Mr. King at one point tells his readers that he does not believe in the profanity but that in order to portray his characters honestly, he must insert profanity into their thoughts and dialog. An interesting premise to be sure, but it does not explain why King places so much of the profanity he disdains throughout the narrative of his book on writing. Face it, the man likes to swear.
I could come up with a dozen more things to gripe about, but the truth is that Mr. King's book on writing is the finest book of its kind that I have read. (And I have read these books by the dozen.)
A number of those people who gave On Writing bad reviews simply did not read far enough. I know. The first time I read this book, I got only as far as King's "impossibly Abraham Lincoln" early married life, the part in which he lived in poverty, taught high school during the day, and sat on his porch with his typewriter poised on his lap at night. I got that far and I quit reading. And here is my true confession, I went to Amazon and gave this book a one-star review which I later removed.
I removed that review because a close friend of mine all but forced me to finish reading the book. No more than 20 pages after the spot where I gave up, King suddenly shifts gears and spends next half of his book giving the most sound and practical advice I have ever seen in a book for young writers. (The book returns to a self-indulgent memoir about the day he was struck by a van and his hard-fought recovery. The word "Memoir" is included in the title, what should you expect?)
He discusses everything from the way you should set up your office to the schedule by which you should write. Unlike the literary advice you get from creative writing professors, King is practical. He is a business man. Yes, he is a successful businessman and he wants you to know it. Early on he says, "anybody who has sold as many books as I have..." This is his writer's bible, he gets to put what he wants in it.
But Stephen King has a lot of important stuff to say. While his message is wrapped in self-indulgence and profanity, it is the singular message of someone who worked hard and succeeded. For those writers who never aspired to be the next Hemingway, Shakespeare, or Faulkner, this is your book.
Not every writer wants to be the next Salman Rushdie or even the next Norman Mailer. King recognizes that there are people who aspire to be John Grisham, Tom Clancy, J. K. Rowling, and Stephen King. I don't know about you, but I get envious when I hear that Dan Brown sold 60 million copies of The Da Vinci Code--many of those in hardback. There are writers who do not want to leave a literary legacy, they just want to write what they like and make a living.
That is one of the things that stand out about On Writing, it is a book for people who want to make a living writing books. This book will likely offend people who believe that writing should be an art and that there is no room in writing for calculating low lives who want to sell stories instead of literary works.
I gave you a list of the major things King did wrong in this book; now let me list just a few of the things he does right. He:
* Helps young writers set up a writing schedule.
* Gives insights into dialog.
* Shows the difference between plot and story.
* Offers wonderful insights into editing your work.
* Explains the importance of balancing description and reader imagination.
* Encourages writers to trust their instincts.
* Gives a needed summary of the basics of correct English.
* Illustrates his points with insights from his experiences as one of the most successful writers of all-time.
Yes, I am aware that this book has flaws in the beginning and in the end, and I still give it five stars. If I had the option, I would give it a sixth star. If you wade through Stephen King's need to indulge himself, skip the beginning... better yet, read it and get over it. He's a great storyteller; and even when he trots out the violins and bemoans his hard life, he is entertaining. And once you get beyond the autobiography, you really will find that King's insights are helpful.
My favorite book of all time I love Stephen King's scary novels and have read all of them, but this non-fiction book describing how he writes those novels is the best thing he has ever written. Reading "On Writing" gives you insight into his personality, as he talks about his supportive wife, and the triumphs and tragedies he has lived through. This insider information makes you appreciate his novels even more. Also if you are an aspiring writer, Mr King gives useful advice on the process of writing and what it's like to get published from his personal experience. Part autobiography, and part "how to write" book, anyone who loves Stephen King will appreciate him even more after reading this book. Luckily it is now available in paperback for a low price. Buy one for everyone on your list who likes Stephen King, and/or wants to be a writer. (I am a full time professional non-fiction writer/reporter who loves Stephen King, loved this book, and learned from it)
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