So many times in life when you hear the name of a successful person you often think of their achievements and their popularity rather than their story. Stephen King, for example, is a man with many a novella to his name, but rarely do we think about his origins, his struggles, or his personality. The belief that Stephen King woke up famous one day is ludicrous and thinking that his book "On Writing" will give you the keys to stardom is equally so. King's book teaches you what it means to be a writer and that a good author is only as good as his tenacity and love.
There are three important lessons about writing I learned from King while reading his book, the first one being to remove the non-essential. There are plenty of times when I'm writing that I find myself adding in as many adjectives and adverbs as I can in an attempt to make my story "come to life," King's memoir brings up the importance of removing a majority of those things because chances are they aren't part of the story. A notable example of this is when King meets John Gould and receives the following piece of advice from him, "When you write a story you're telling yourself the story, when you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story" (p. 57)
Gould's words struck a chord with King and they must have with me as well because lately many of my stories have been focusing on the essential details, the who, the what, the why, rather than just relying on excess words to carry the imagery and tone of the story.
Going along with the the theme of writing and rewriting, the second lesson King's book taught me was not to worry too much about the technicalities. It sounded absurd to me at first, I thought "How can you be a good writer if you don't have things like good grammar?" It wasn't until I read more of the book that I began to truly understand King's ideas on how to use your creativity first and then take the time to edit.
King states at one point that, "The object of fiction isn't grammatical correctness but to make the reader feel welcome and then tell a story." (p. 134) This was the first part of the story where I felt like I'd learned something truly profound in terms of writing, because I tend to treat every first draft like it's my final one and more often than not that constant search for incorrect grammar and better wording hinders my creative flow and gets in the way of turning in anything at all. King's advice has not only given me a new thought-process, but a better writing structure as well as I can now put down all my ideas fearlessly and go back and revise them when I'm in a more tactical mindset.
The third lesson I got from "On Writing" is that no matter how talented you are or how dedicated to your craft you may be, you will always have a critic. It's a fact of life that there are mean people in the world, but it's still enough to hold me back from putting myself out there and doing what I like, of course I'm the only one who feels this way, in fact King himself was in this same boat at one point or another before he came to a very important conclusion.
"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 or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent." (p. 50) King's outlook about criticism is direct and to the point, it exists and that's that. Taking the finality of this statement into account I came to my own conclusion; critics will be there no matter what, so it's really just a matter of whether or not you want to keep doing what you love.
One last thing that really spoke to me in this book is this one specific quote, "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 center of the room. Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around." (p. 101)
I'm not a professional writer, far from it in fact, but this quote and its context spoke to me in a very personal way. When King took his office and turned it into a living room, pushing his desk into the corner instead, I felt it was symbolic of not letting your life be dominated by your inner-demons and opening up to those you care for and changing the center of your life just like he changed the center of his room. As someone who has walked the long road to recovery and has had to make that difficult search for their center, this quote is incredibly important to me.
Now, if all of these reasons aren't enough to get you invested in the story, here are a few more reasons I think that every reader, writer, and Stephen King fan, should read this book....
Number one, for every aspiring writer this book gives you a set of easy to understand tools to help you improve your writing, whether you're in the process of writing a 300 word novel or if you plan on taking a writing class next term, King's toolbox gives readers an in-depth look at what it means to write a good story.
Number two, King's book is easy to read. If you're worried that a memoir made by a famous author will read like a formal essay on "how to write horror-fiction," it's not. King's book is written in a conversational tone that makes you feel like you're speaking to the man himself, the way King explains things by using his own experiences or thoughts makes all of his lessons memorable and enjoyable and always eager to turn the next page.
Finally, "On Writing" leaves an impact on you. The moments King relays to the readers are full of embarrassment, hilarity, sorrow, shame, and love. It's a book that not only teaches you about what it means to not only be the writer of a book, but of your life as well. This book leaves you with a new outlook on life, it teaches you to appreciate who you are and where you come from, and it makes you realize that anything is possible.
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