Product Description

Find out what books and films influenced the young writer, his first idea for a story and the true life tale that inspired CARRIE. For the first time, here’s an intimate autobiographical portrait of his home life, his family and his traumatic recent accident. Citing examples of his work and those of his contemporaries, King gives an excellent masterclass on writing - how to use the tools of the trade from building characters to pace and plotting as well as practical advice on presentation. And King tells readers how he got to be a No. 1 bestseller for a quarter of a century with fascinating descriptions of his own process, the origins and development of, e.g. CARRIE and MISERY.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #629 in Books
• Published on: 2001-09-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 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
'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

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

Marvelous
ON WRITING is better than I thought it would be. It's marvelous. I finished it in less than two days.

In the First Forward, Stephen King observes that popular novelists are never "asked about the language" when queried by admiring fans. Thus, he states:

"What follows is an attempt to put down , briefly and simply, how I came to the craft (of telling stories on paper), what I know about it now, and how it's done. It's about the day job; it's about the language."

In the first hundred or so pages, King shares his experiences growing up in Maine and Connecticut, his marriage, his struggles as a novice writer, and his drug and alcohol problems. King intends this section not as an autobiography, but as a curriculum vitae. It ends with the assignment of the paperback rights to CARRIE, his first novel.

In the next 150 pages, the author describes how he performs his craft. He explains the "tools" of writing (vocabulary and grammar), the creative environment (the room, the door, the determination to close the door, and the music - Hard Rock in King's case), style and formatting (paragraphing, narration, description, and dialogue), and the final stretch to a finished piece (drafts, editing, and proofreading by a trusted friend - wife/author Tabitha in King's case).

The final few pages, in a way, are the most interesting. It's Stephen's account of the road accident in 1999 that inflicted multiple fractures to his ribs and lower body, and the effect the mishap had on his writing. Ironically enough, he'd half completed this book at the time of the incident, and he had to struggle to come back and finish.

Though King was once a high school English teacher, ON WRITING is in no way pedantic, but chatty and informal. It's a book straight from the author's heart, and it shows.

"Don't wait for the muse ... This isn't the Ouija board or the spirit-world we're talking about here, but just another job like laying pipe or driving long-haul trucks. Your job is to make sure the muse knows where you're going to be every day from nine 'til noon or seven 'til three. If he does know, I assure you that sooner or later he'll start showing up, chomping his cigar and making his magic."

The author's first rule for good writing is that the writer must read a lot. Well, I do that - constantly. Perhaps I can improve my own poor scribbling. In this review, I've followed his advice; I've kept the paragraphs short and avoided use of passive sentence construction. That's something, at least.

A masterclass in the writing life
This is two books in one, yet it isn't. The autobiographical section is not so much a potted history of King's life as a description of his writing apprenticeship - the experiences and emotions, from the stimulants of his childhood imagination to the abuse of stimulants, from the experience of rejection to the experience of survival after being hit by a van.

Writing, King makes clear, isn't simply the ability to do joined up words or type at a keyboard. Writing is about pain and experience, knowledge and emotion, understanding and questioning. Writing is about life ... and if you want to be a good writer, then you must live to write. In the process you may have to fight to survive alcohol and drugs and poverty and loneliness ... and the dangers round that next bend. Even when you've sold your first story, you're never comfortable, never sure it wasn't a fluke and that the next one won't be hurled back in your face.

It's a fascinating insight into King's psyche, one which prepares you for the guidance he offers writers. He puts together a toolkit of advice to motivate and encourage you to write. Much of the toolkit, of course, can be described as words and sweat. If you write, language is your medium. If you want to write well, you have to work at it.

There's a strong motivational element to King's book. He pulls no punches. Not everyone can be a great writer. Everyone might have a novel in them, but not many people have a novel anyone else would want to read. Be realistic about your talent. Appreciate you can improve, can refine your skills and techniques. But, it'll take work, lots of hard work, and you may still never write a masterpiece.

But writing is a process of self-belief and self-fulfilment and self-discovery. It is, only incidentally, a commercial activity. If you can make a living from it, so much the better. Writing is as much an addiction as drugs or alcohol. It is, however, a life enhancing and life asserting addiction.

I doubt if King needs the money, but you should buy this book if you have any love of or interest in writing - whether you harbour the notion of writing that masterpiece, of simply seeing a piece in print, or whether you write a private journal and enjoy the texture of passion and tactile delight of putting words on paper. For the writer in you, this book is a must read. It's life-affirming, and so well paced, it reads like a thriller. You'll keep turning the pages and won't be able to put the light out.

A well-written exploration of writing & memoir...
Having grown up on Stephen King- 'Salem's Lot', 'The Dead Zone', 'Pet Semetary', 'It'& 'The Stand' were big favourites (and still are!). I had gone off him around 'The Tommyknockers'. Discovered other writers. Came back and was unimpressed by 'Needful Things'& 'Gerald's Game'. Read others. Came back to 'Insomnia', which was good (if a bit overlong)& his 3rd collection of short-stories (always a source of gems...). Read other authors, discovered alternate worlds, went to University, got a bit snobbish about texts that weren't Camus or Nabokov (or whoever). Started having good memories regarding King's work. Re-read 'Thinner' (for some reason), then read 'The Green Mile' (I had started reading the episode editions, but lost track of them due to a bout of hedonism) & then 'Hearts of Atlantis'. I couldn't get away from it- Stephen King is an excellent writer. He might entertain & shift units to those who haven't read Achebe or Joyce (or whoever is in vogue within the realm of literary study...). But he has something...

And that something is on show here- in this look behind the curtain. In this 'How to-' book and a whole lot more...

The first part takes in King's formative years- frequent readers will recognise parts of 'The Body'& 'It' (amongst others)in some of the portraits. Here we have autobiography blended with the cloud of remembrance- fiction protects the actual...One of the most moving parts here is the recall of the influences for 'Carrie'- it took me back to school, where I could see the people who didn't fit in. I didn't bully them, but probably added to it by making fun, going with the herd or just ignoring them. I hope they're flowers now- rather than beneath the earth as the people here are...There is also a lot here about King's hard times- life wasn't always so easy. He had to work hard to get where he was- and finally it was down to good fortune & commitment. King concedes if he had been as busy as his wife,his writing career might not have been as fruitful.

The second part tells you about writing- tips & examples are given; this will be of interest to King's fans (how he constructed these worlds we live in) & those who wish to write (not forgetting those in both camps). Intriguing is the 'influence' for 'Misery'- and a depiction of it's original end (which, thank God, he managed to avert). This section is writing at its best, laying out rules & advice for those who wish to write.

The final section takes in the 'interruption' of King's near fatal crash- and his slow recovery. Here, it seems like another hurdle for King to transcend (and this he does, by finishing this very book).

There is also a reading list- of some of the books he has read over the past few years; the one's I've read I feel much the same about. The one's I haven't are names to add to the list of books that I intend to read...

I don't know if by reading this book (or the equally good, if a bit more 'establishment' 'The Creative Writing Coursebook')that everyone who does so will become a King,or a Tan ,or whoever. My usual complaint about 'How to Write a Novel/Short Story'-books is that you have never heard of those who have written it. So, what can someone who you have never heard of say to you- who is on an equal footing?...This book is one I will come back to- and proof that King is a very good, if not excellent, writer. Ultimately, this book comes from a deep love of the craft of writing- the sense of vocation Dennis Potter talked of. If you love books, then this book is for you...