"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.
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
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
On Writing - by Stephen King:
Stephen King's On Writing covers inspiration, writing, editing and storytelling from the perspective of arguably the World's greatest living writer. He provides examples of how a piece can be written and then illustrates the language which makes it come alive. Also provided are tips, tricks and techniques which will improve any writer's approach to the craft. King stresses the need to read if you want to write and he provides his favoured reading list as one starting point. He cites examples of... more info
Inspirational book for writers and readers alike!:
I found King's memoir on the craft of writing On Writing more inspirational than instructional (a good thing) though he does spend quite a bit of time addressing the deadly overuse of the adverb (ah, there's one now) in beginning writer's work. Reading about King's struggles to write and to publish amidst his struggles to live serve to remind writers that we can overcome the challenges we face in life and use them to inform our writing. King fans interested in how writers work, find motivation, and... more info
Excellent:
This book is a combination of autobiography and instructions on writing. Mr. King selects incidents from his youth that led him to become a writer, and illuminates us on his progress. Should be a delightful book for anyone who wishes to become a popular writer, and appreciates this man's books. I find it helpful and fun to read.
The Best:
Simply the best guide to writing that I have ever read. It humanizes the whole process. Arthur
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