Product Description

This text offers a unique insight into the life of Stephen King. It explores what books and films influenced him as a young writer, his first idea for a story and the true-life tale that inspired Carrie. The book also takes the reader through all the basic skills of writing.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #256555 in Books
• Published on: 2000-10-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
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 caretaker 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 symbolised 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 HP Lovecraft's arcane vocabulary, Hemingway's leanness, Grisham's authenticity, Richard Dooling's artful obscenity, Jonathan Kellerman's sentence fragments. He explains why Kellerman's 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

Review
This is the book that Stephen King fans have been waiting for: a fascinating combination of autobiography and personal voyage through the books and films that have inspired this phenomenally successful author. Actually, King has attempted something like this before, with the equally fascinating Danse Macabre, and the new book shares the same clear-eyed view of what makes a reader's blood chill, be it literary fiction or the pulp horror that is equally dear to King's heart. Horror writers are not the only grist to his mill - he is equally interesting on Raymond Chandler and John Grisham, as well as providing an invaluable insight into his working methods that will no doubt be pored over by aspiring authors throughout the world in the hope of replicating his success. There is also a subtle and revealing portrait of his home life and the recent traumatic car accident that nearly ended his career. But, most of all, it is King's vaunting enthusiasm for the genre he loves so dearly that communicates itself on every page.

King needs no introduction. Having written more than 30 books, all of them best-sellers, his notable reputation goes before him. In this, his latest work, inspired by an accident in June 1999 which almost killed him, we are presented with an extraordinary account of how his legendary fiction actually stems from his experiences of life, love, drugs and beer, offering insights into a major writer of stunning suspense and gripping fiction. He begins with an account of his childhood with which he recollects in an honest and detailed, matter-of-fact style, which continues throughout the book where we learn how the seeds for writing were fist planted. King leads us through his life, which at times was turbulent and troubled, splintered only occasionally by moments of joy and happiness. Taking us through his college years and times of financial struggle, working at Worumbo Mills and Weaving, then New Franklin Laundry, where his working conditions might have provided great inspiration for ideas, he recalls the moment when he had two ideas that became Carrie.Teaching English now, he fused the thoughts of a girl ignorant of pubity and other girls making fun, with articles he had read on telekinesis. Combining this with his real-life experiences of watching two very lonely students, taunted and misunderstood by their peers and who were dead before he even put pen to paper, gave him all that he needed to create the formidable and alarming work that is now infamous. Driven by this troubled personality and character, he reveals how other books were fed with similar inspiration and though the text is graphic and the language colourful, it is tightly interwoven with exceptional and constructive advice for other writers, who would do well to take note if they are to enter the unique competition at the end of this book. King suggests that a book is an escape hatch. This one will take you into another world - his world - it's up to you if you want to come back. (Kirkus UK)

Review
‘Absolutely fascinating’ (Sunday Times )

‘Not since Dickens has a writer had so many readers by the throat…King’s imagination is vast. He knows how to engage the deepest sympathies of his readers…a bizarre and absorbing story, told brilliantly by one of the great storytellers of our time’ (Guardian )

'The childhood memoir is a triumphant display of wit, story-telling and guts. His advice to writers is hard-nosed, practical and level-headed in the classic journalistic Orwell-Hemingway tradition' (Evening Standard )

‘Energetic, vivid and observant’ (Daily Telegraph )

‘This is the written equivalent of Delia Smith’s How To Cook. And, like British home cooking, the world of popular fiction will be better off for it’ (The Times )

Customer Reviews

A must read for aspiring writers
A fantastic book for anyone interested in writing. Stephen King is a writer I've only discovered recently, and I've been really enjoying his books. As an aspiring writer I got curious about what his advice might be for a new writer.

I'll keep this brief as other reviewers have been in general agreement. Some of the tips he gives are simple but will genuinely stick (for me it was adverbs). You might find these tips in other books - I've bought a few - but the difference is King really knows how to WRITE - even about writing itself. I've started reading some truly tedious tomes on how to be a good writer... only to be staggered at the fact the author couldn't keep my interest past the first couple of chapters. King's writing is the best kind - entertaining and educational in equal measure. You're learning while you're laughing. He gives great examples, as well as some interesting insights into his own experiences as a writer. I especially liked the anecdotes he gives about writing 'Misery' and 'The Stand'.

Fans will be interested in the memoir aspect, but it's worth the money as a well-written and entertaining guide to writing itself.

Wisdom from the Master
It's no secret that Stephen King is the world's bestselling author. How he does that, is explained by himself in this book.

The first part of the book is a short, although insightful, autobiography. In this part King talks about his childhood, how he first became interested in horror and in writing and how his life was before he became world famous.

The larger part of the book is about writing. How to do it and how to do it well. Unlike some books on writing, King is not orthodox about this subject. There are a lot of "DO"'s and "DON'T"'s, plenty of tips and the revelation that to write good fiction all you have to do is to grab the vocabulary you have and use it on a good story. That's really all there is to it.

In the third and final part, King talks about his near-fatal accident with the vivid description that he always uses.

All in all, this is a must read for anyone writing fiction and with King's humour and personal style, it's a pleasure to read for anyone who has ever enjoyed any of his books.

The Audio version is read by King himself and is absolutely superb!

The Bible on writing.
Quite simply, if you want to be a writer, this is a must read. Succinct, brilliantly arrogant at times, but he tells it as it is. Recommend without reservation.