Stephen King: Close The Door, Then Start Writing

dec 17, 2014

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door

I’ve just finished reading On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (2000), a book about writing by Stephen King. Blogs like Brain Pickings often quote from it.

I only know Stephen King from the movie adaptations of The Shining, The Green Mile, The Shawshank Redemption. But after reading On Writing, I feel like I’ve known King for ages.

He writes about his wandering youth, drug addiction and a near-death experience – caused by a guy who had a hard time driving a Dodge van. King does this to show why he writes. ‘For the buzz’ and ‘as a spit in the eye of despair’.

These are the things I’ll remember after reading On Writing:

Shut the door. King stresses that you shouldn’t ask people to read along. It’s about your imagination and you shouldn’t worry about explaining the story at an early stage.
Write two drafts. Don’t edit while writing the first one. You’re trying to uncover a fossil; a story of which the first idea has popped up in your mind and that you should now try to grasp in its entirety. Just worry about the story.
Keep the first draft in a drawer for six weeks.
In the second draft, look for meaning and ideas. Rewrite the story in such a way that your theme comes out more clearly for the future reader.
Formula: 2nd draft = 1st draft – 10%.
Alcohol and drugs won’t stimulate your creativity.
‘Life isn’t a support system for art. It’s the other way around.’

And:

‘God, if only I were in the right writing environment, with the right understanding people, I just KNOW I could be penning my masterpiece’.

Without making any false promises – ‘a good writer will never become a great writer’ – King encourages you to start uncovering fossils.

Of course this is a terrible summary of a wise and warm book. Please just see it as a lengthy recommendation to read On Writing.

If I’ll, one day, will want to write a work of fiction, I’ll definitely read this book again.

But first, I’ll read at least one of Kings novels. When you’ve come to like a person so much in just a couple of evenings, you want to know what he has created.

Stephen King – On Writing: a memoir of the craft (2000)