Stephen King's On Writing

Barry, I too have this book out of the library and am reading it, bit by bit. I'm enjoying it. I like the way he is sharing little segments of his life with us.

by the way, Barry, you must be somewhere that's a few hours ahead of me - I'm at 11:09 pm here in Toronto and you are already on the 23rd of the month. England?

Hi Barry. Wow let me see if I've got this straight, King wrote a book about writing! Well it's about time. As you may know Barry, I'm not one of King's biggest fans. Quiet frankly I find his work to be a bit too structured and predictable for my tastes. I mean if he ever stepped outside of his tried and true format, now that would really scare me. LOL. I would however be interested in what he has to say about the art of writing. If this is the jist of this book maybe I'll check it out. Thanks.

Hi Carly: I'm impressed; Yeah, I'm in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Great to see another Canadian. I worked in Toronto for six months in 1981.

Yeah, is entitled "On Writing." As I mentioned in my initial posting, this is somewhat a biography for King but I would recommend the book to be borrowed from the library. He tells about how he got his start in the business, his alcohol problem, and some writing tips. I'm almost finished the book and I found it an enjoyable read.

hi barry ... nice to see you on the site ... i have read an extract of King's book in one of the sunday's ... somehow it failed to make me rush out and read the rest ... am not a fan of his ... but the insight into the writing process might well be interesting ...

Hi Ivoryfishbone. Good to meet you. I know what you mean about Stephen King. In fact I've never read an entire book by him until "On Writing." And I shouldn't really include that either until I've finished the last chapter.

I think he was the writer who said that writing is just like exercise, practise is what you need. If you do it for half and hour a day after ten years you'll be great. Was that in the book?

I've finished the book. And yes, Diana, he said a lot of practise, hard work, etc. etc. Cheers.

Haven't read the book yet, but two points :- 1. It must be better to have a writer who has actually achieved something write a book about the process than the usual nobody hacks who try to describe how to write. Must have something of note to say. The best tip I've had recently was from Martin Amis in Experience 'don't start consecutive paragraphs with the same word unless you do it deliberately for effect' - it is very simple, but it does make a difference to the work. (I don't always remember to do this, in case pedants want to pull me up) 2. Although King's work has certainly gone off in recent years, non-readers don't generally appreciate that he is a consummate writer of dialogue. The genre has its limitations, but King can actually write dialogue that works when read aloud, something an awful lot of published writers fail at.

A brief comment about Amis: I too have just read Experience and enjoyed it thoroughly. He's much more interesting as an essayist than a novelist, I think. And on the subject of paragraphs: there was an instance, some years ago now, whereby a Times columnist was severely reprimanded for sending secret messages to his mistress. The messages were encoded into his articles using the first letter of each paragraph. I recall spending hours searching for the saucy encryptions, without luck. Perhaps it was a just a ruse to make mugs like me subscribe to The Times.

I've been reading King for years - I think my first book by him was Dead Zone - I really liked it. I can't say I've enjoyed 'everything' he's done - the worst one I read was 'IT' - I didn't like the book and I didn't like the movie. I also didn't like the Dark Tower stuff that he did. Misery, Dolores Clairborne, Gerald's Game, Bag of Bones, Insomnia ... I liked them.