On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft - Stephen King
Read: 04.07.16
As a freshmen in college I sometimes feel that my writing has stopped improving. Papers came and went, they were nothing but a percentage of my grade. I've never really thought about "writing well" on them. The focus was stronger on completing the assignment. Eventually I figured I couldn't keep working like this. At this rate, things were going to get ugly.
So I began anew. For too long, I appreciated my work unjustly— because they were mine. What a ridiculous bias. Change was necessary. The first step was to define what "good writing" entails. (only if there was a ONE TRUE RUBRIC)
That's where this book comes in. Stephen King confirmed my intuition about what good writing is. I'm sure everyone has at least a sense of what "good writing" is. Popular works resonate with professionalism and leave a strong impression, but explicitly discerning why we feel the way we do or where it's coming from is difficult. Maybe it's the style, or the simplicity of the sentence. Maybe it's how the details come to life or the intricate symbols hidden within the pages.
Whatever it may be is for you to decide, but here's what this part-autobiography part-instruction-manual taught me:
- Good writing may be a subjective standard, but all good writing share certain characteristics.
- The only way to become a better writer is to read and write more.
I should proceed to explain these two points, but since there are more demanding tasks at hand I cannot (remember, college student). What I can do is include some of my favorite passages from the book. Enjoy.
"I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops. To put it another way, they're like dandelions. If you have one on your lawn, it looks pretty and unique. If you fail to root it out, however, you find five the next day... fifty the ay after that... and then, my brothers and sisters, your lawn is totally, and completely, and profligately covered with dandelions. By then you see them for the weeds they really are, but by then it's— GASP!!—too late." (125)
"There is a muse, but he's not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust all over your typewriter or computer station. He lives in the ground. He's a basement guy. You have to descend to his level, and once you get down there you have to furnish an apartment for him to live in. You have to do all the grunt labor, in other words, while the muse sits and smokes cigars and admires his bowling trophies and pretends to ignore you. Do you think this is fair? I think it's fair. He may not be much to look at, that muse-guy, and he may not be much of a conversationalist (what I get out of mine is mostly surly grunts, unless he's on duty), but he's got the inspiration. It's right that you should do all the work and burn all the midnight oil, because the guy with the cigar and the little wings has got a bag of magic. There's stuff in there that can change your life." (145)
"Description begins in the writer's imagination, but should finish in the reader's." (174)
"In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it "got boring," the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling." (178)
King, Stephen. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. New York: Scribner, 2000. Print.