“There will be people who will tell you that you are going to hell,” Wrote Stephen King in his book. He did not start the book off with that, but it is what I am thinking about. Many people will simply want you to agree with their viewpoint and attempt to censor you for various reasons. You will write things that offend, shock, and disrupt people’s lives. King wrote that he sometimes had to remind people that the story and the characters were not real.
I was listening to the audiobook version of Stephen King’s book titled On Writing. He has a good voice and can act out different characters very well. His advice on many things concerning writing is appreciated. I completed the book over a month ago and should have written some notes and reviewed this book a little sooner. Here are some things I remember.
He talks about the necessity of reading a lot. He reads about seventy books a year. Reading was mentioned as a necessity because authors need to understand how other writers write and learn from them. There are many lessons in seeing how others have written. We can learn about the essentials of a genre.
Vocabulary is, of course, essential. It is another thing that he talked about. He said it has to be what one uses naturally and not forced into something else. One should not search out painful combinations of words unnatural to how one writes. Several authors are mentioned, as well as their styles and vocabulary use, and he helps us appreciate how well they communicate in either their plain language or their very flowery and decorative style.
He also mentioned the importance of research for your writing. Read to learn new things and to properly present places, ideas, and people in the narrative so that it does not violate the actual truth or reality of what you are trying to explain.
Reading is very important to him. He talks about many places where you need a book to keep you company. Sometimes, he has to wait for some reason, and having a physical, digital, or audiobook is appreciated to help him endure wherever he may be.
He brought up a lot of stories about his life. I remembered that idea of ‘write what you know’. I kept thinking there were a lot of experiences in his life to draw from as substance and material for his stories. Some of those experiences might be seeds for ideas, emotions, and narratives that could be grown into novels. It seemed he did not entirely agree with ‘write what you know’ as he thought research was important and growth and expansion necessary to explore and develop something new.
He does not seem to like books that try to teach someone how to write or writing conferences. He mentions many people have taught themselves what they needed to know to be writers. Writers, he believes, have something within that calls them to want to write. They should want to continually improve and work on their craft. He tells a story of an interest in a musical instrument when he was young and that his parents decided to invest in buying him one and then hiring a teacher. The only time he took out the instrument and used it was when the tutor was there for the lesson. The instrument did not call him day or night or at any other time when the tutor was not there. A passion for playing music and practicing on this instrument was missing. The music lessons were eventually discontinued. He has worked on many stories and books and published them for decades, and it is definitely something that he feels he must do. While writing this book On Writing, he became ill and expressed a dread of writing it. Maybe I remember incorrectly.
I liked how his mom encouraged him to write his own stories when he was a boy. I appreciated his efforts at getting published in magazines and sending his novels to publishers. I enjoyed the surprise when he was offered the large sum of 200,000 dollars for his first book sometime in the 1970s.
He started his career without an agent and eventually recognized he needed one. Not all are good agents. Some might steal. I don’t remember the details or his experience for that claim. An agent is there to serve the purpose of representing your interest and making sure you get paid what the work is worth.
He wrote that there may be a perception that the writing industry is just a big, happy, incestually closed party. Not true he said. They are all looking for the next author who will sell a lot of books.
Critique groups may be of value or not. They can cause a lot of self-doubt, make you question yourself, and drain your energy, but on the positive side, when are they useful, such groups might expose a writer’s ignorance of blind spots that can then be worked on and improved. Believe in yourself. Be your own advocate. He said that he valued the closed door for privacy when he worked, but critique groups are like having the door wide open.
His son is also a writer, and the last part of the book is an interview with his dad. Stephen King has a good voice for portraying different characters.
In my article, I write a few things I remember. To get the full effect, you will need to read it yourself. I enjoyed it.