Book Review: On Writing by Stephen King
I feel a little like I’m cheating because I discussed Stephen King’s On Writing before, but I hadn’t finished it then.
King’s book is a combination memoir and writing guide. At first it seemed odd to combine these two types of books. From a financial standpoint, two books means more income. But about halfway into the first of the seven disks, I had completely forgotten my objections. The stories are inextricably intertwined, as King started writing and submitting stories from a young age.
The most compelling moment was when King told of selling the paperback rights to his first novel, Carrie. He was expecting the deal to be between $10K and $50K. Instead, it was for $400K. He and his wife had been barely scraping by since they got married, so the paycheck came just in time.
After spending a little more than a third of the book on his life story so far, he gets into the nitty gritty of writing. He touches on writing craft, giving general rules and then allowing writers to break them, as long as they do so with clear purpose and for good effect. He shares his hatred of adverbs and gives a good description of how to set up a space and schedule for writing. He peppers his discussion with scenes from his family life–it is obvious that he believes he owes his wife a huge debt for supporting his dream and for putting up with him all these years.
He provides a particularly useful tip for beginning writers that should help get you to a novel that is ready to show to an editor or agent: Write furiously to capture the story, using a “closed door” approach to your manuscript. No one else is to see it, and you aren’t to go back and futz over it. Just get the story on paper/screen. Then set it aside for a time while you work on other things or completely ignore writing. Let it rest long enough that you aren’t thinking about it, wondering what you could have done differently in this paragraph or reveling in the glory of your final scene. Then go back to it as if it were new to you. Read it, in one sitting if possible, proofreading and noting plot holes, characterization issues, and the like. At this point, you can also begin soliciting input from your trusted early readers, your friends, your spouse, your critique group, whoever you prefer. He calls this the “open door” phase.
As a beginning fiction writer myself, I find that if I take too much time off from my “closed door” phase, I have to re-read what I have written and futz over it needlessly to try to get myself back into the story. I will heed King’s words and begin again the process of capturing the errant thoughts as they appear in my mind. There’s plenty of time for editing later.
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