You read that right.
I’ve never read any of Stephen King’s work.
This doesn’t mean I have no idea who King is; his popularity and prolificacy mean his stories have been adapted for film since before I was born. My first run-in with King was the 1989 adaptation of Pet Sematary when I was somewhere around 7. The nightmares have never truly left. More recently, my Video Production professor had us watch Kubrick’s fantastic The Shining (a movie that King famously despises), because that course was actually a film study class cleverly disguised as an introduction to Adobe Premiere. Whether it’s on the page or the silver screen, King has been weaving in and out of the zeitgeist for decades; I couldn’t avoid him if I tried.
My interest in King came from my opening looks into starting to write freelance. When I was looking for literature that could help in this endeavor, there were two words in just about every reading list:
Intrigued by its ubiquity, I picked up a 20th anniversary paperback and dove in. Having ravenously consumed the book over the course of two evenings, I understand why it’s so positively received.
The first half of On Writing is a scattershot memoir of King’s youth. The memoir section wasn’t what I’d purchased the book for, but I was immediately drawn into King’s childhood tales. He speaks of his years growing up broke in a single-parent household, having adventures with his brother, and eventually writing stories of his own after years of reading pulp sci-fi and horror stories. As he gets older, he’s dragged into various newspapers against his will, goes to college, and meets his wife, who tells him that the tossed-out manuscript that would become Carrie has some real potential.
Spoilers: Carrie does fantastically, King makes a mint on the paperback sale, and much of the rest is a tale of success, drug addiction, recovery, and more success. He’s still writing now– it’s the one addiction he refuses to shake.
The second half of the book moves the narrative from King’s life to his craft. The section is a series of do’s, don’ts, and examples that King implies should be taken with a grain of salt. One rule is sacrosanct, though: read a lot and write a lot. This rule, the Prime Rule, is non-negotiable. If you don’t read a lot, you won’t have the sense for what good prose sounds and reads like. If you don’t write a lot, you won’t be able to eventually write something competent, let alone good. It’s pretty obvious, if you think about it. Such is the same for a lot of King’s recommendations. Watch the adverbs. Write what you know. Don’t break normal grammatical conventions unless you know you’re making something good. Kill your darlings. It’s nothing magical or sensational, but in a way, that’s the magic of it; a famous and successful author is affirming that the common rules of thumb you hear actually work, when combined with a lot of time and effort.
Aside from the normal tips, King covers how he handles drafts, accepts criticisms from his friends, and challenges you to write at a pace similar to his own. He recommends 1,000 words a day, half of what he does, and is ‘kind’ enough to let you negotiate a day off in the week. Again, the key to success isn’t pure happenstance; it’s busting your ass until you write something that someone will pay to read.
I really enjoyed On Writing. It let me know that my apprehensions towards trying to write for a living were easy to overcome. Just do the thing. Never stop. Get good. This works for fiction and non-fiction, though King writes for an audience interested in writing prose. Rejection happens. Edits happen. “There is no perfect document,” as my Technical Writing professor used to say. If you want to be a writer, you’ve got to push past those pitfalls and keep honing your craft.
Read a lot and write a lot. The hardest part is picking up the habit.