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.
I think the person who wrote the back caption of this book needs to start drinking decaf coffee.
While I loved the autobiography beginning of this book, I had quite the love and hate relationship with it for a while. (Thus it took me a longer time to read than usual and it has been on my ‘what I’m reading’ portion of the Tuesday list forever and a day.)
Stephen King starts out with a little mini autobiography, which I liked, and then gets into the nuts and bolts of writing. While being extremely quotable throughout the book, I found myself not satisfied on some level that kept me putting this book down and not picking it up for a while quite a few times.
It was when I realized that this is not a ‘here’s how to write’ book and is a book Stephen King wrote about writing (yes, there is a difference) that I began to really love the book. What you need to realize is that King wrote a book about writing; he didn’t write a manual. It seems like that’s what it is at some points, but he mainly tells you about what works for him instead of what should work for everyone.
All in all, I would recommend this book to anyone, even if you aren’t a writer. In fact, you’ll probably have an easier time of enjoying it if you aren’t a writer, strangely enough. I am going to read this book again now that I know to read it like a book rather than some guide written by a guru.
February 19th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
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