Books |
Stephen King: On Writing
By
Published: Apr 15, 2024
Category:
Memoir
SUPPORTING BUTLER: Head Butler no longer gets a commission on your Amazon purchases. So the only way you can contribute to Head Butler’s bottom line is to become a patron of this site, and automatically donate any amount you please each month — starting with $1. The service that enables this is Patreon, and to go there, just click here. Thank you.
LAST WEEK IN BUTLER: Weekend Butler. Boubacar Traore
—-
I have one more test to pass to convince the hospital’s insurance company that I’m not likely to die on the operating table and they’ll have to pay my heirs the hundreds of millions of dollars I would have earned from the novel I’m writing now. It’s a stress test, and it’s well-named — it lasts four hours, much of it waiting for my system to calm down between stresses. Choosing a book to read is crucial. I’ve read Stephen King’s memoir, and I remember laughing a lot and crying a little — it will be good company tomorrow. As I look at the headlines, I grasp I’m not the only one getting stressed this week. This book will heal and amuse. And if you ever need to write anything, it’s gold.
Reader Review: ‘I got this book for an airplane read. Sat next to the window and started in. That book had me laughing so hard that tears were pouring down my face. I did my best not to make any noise, but wasn’t completely successful. The woman sitting next to me thought I was distraught and in the midst of a total breakdown.’
Stephen King, about this book: Why did I want to write about writing? What made me think I had anything worth saying? The easy answer is that someone who has sold as many books of fiction as I have must have something worthwhile to say about writing it, but the easy answer isn’t always the truth. Colonel Sanders sold a hell of a lot of fried chicken, but I’m not sure anyone wants to know how he made it. If I was going to be presumptuous enough to tell people how to write, I felt there had to be a better reason than my popular success. Put another way, I didn’t want to write a book, even a short one like this, that would leave me feeling like a literary gasbag or a transcendental asshole. There are enough of those books — and those writers — on the market already, thanks.
Nobody ever asks me about language. They ask the DeLillos and the Updikes and the Styrons, but they don’t ask popular novelists. Yet many of us proles also care about the language, in our humble way, and care passionately about the art and craft of telling stories on paper. This book is an attempt to put down, briefly and simply, how I came to the craft, what I know about it now, and how it’s done. It’s about the day job; it’s about the language.
“On Writing” is two books, both excellent, for the price of one.
The first is a memoir, maybe the closest to an autobiography we’ll ever get from Stephen King.
It’s also a lesson in writing.
From paragraph two: “I lived an odd, herky-jerky childhood, raised by a single parent who moved around a lot in my earliest years and who — I am not completely sure of this — may have farmed my brother and me out to one of her sisters for awhile because she was economically or emotionally unable to cope with us. Perhaps she was only chasing our father, who piled up all sorts of bills and then did a runout when I was two and my brother David was four.”
Lesson one: Tell the truth. And skip the charm if none belongs.
At six, Stephen wrote a story. Or, rather, copied it. His mother praised it. Stephen was forced to admit it wasn’t original. “Write one of your own, Stevie,” his mother said. “I bet you could do better.” He did. His mother praised it.
“Nothing anyone has said to me since has made me feel any happier.”
The young writer was launched.
His high school newspaper adviser was his next big influence.
“When you write, you’re telling yourself the story,” he told King. “When you rewrite, your job is taking out all the things that are not in the story.”
I underlined that; you should too.
King married. Two kids in three years. On a teacher’s salary. Meanwhile, he wrote and wrote. Men’s magazines paid for his kids’ medicines. Two novels made not much of a dent in the book world. His wife never wavered: she believed. His third novel was “Carrie.” It sold to a hardcover publisher for $2,500 — King had no agent; what did he know about advances? — and then to a paperback house for $400,000. He got the call on Mother’s Day; $200,000 of that advance was his. He looked around his dumpy apartment and cried. Then, in a Maine town where you really couldn’t find anything to splurge on, he went out and bought his wife a hair-dryer. [To buy the paperback of ‘On Writing’ from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]
How do you follow a story like that? Well, if you’re Stephen King, you go right on to this: ‘I got drunk for the first time in 1966.’ And to where that leads. Alcoholism. His mother dies, sadly, badly. Cocaine addiction follows. His family intervenes. He cleans up. And now — after a hundred inspiring and brutal pages — he’s ready for Part II, which is his book about writing.
Subject, verb, object: that’s one “secret.” Verbs are active, not passive. “I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs.” Want to be a good writer? Read! A lot! And then write! A lot! And write fast: The first draft of a novel should take no longer than three months. Rewriting: If you haven’t removed 10% of your previous draft, you haven’t done it.
And this:
Put your vocabulary on the top shelf of your toolbox, and don’t make any conscious effort to improve it. (You’ll be doing that as you read, of course … but that comes later.) One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for a long words because you may be a little bit ashamed of your short ones. This is like dressing up a household pet in evening clothes. The pet is embarrassed and the person who committed this act of premeditated cuteness should even be more embarrassed. Make yourself a solemn promise right now that you’ll never use “emolument” when you mean “tip” and you’ll never say John stopped long enough to perform an act of excretion when you mean John stopped long enough to take a shit. If you believe “take a shit “would be considered offensive or inappropriate by your audience, feel free to say John stopped long enough to move his bowels (or perhaps) John stopped long enough to “push”). I’m not trying to get you to talk dirty, only plain and direct. Remember the basic rule of vocabulary is use the first word that comes to your mind, if it is appropriate and colorful. If you hesitate and cogitate, you will come up with another word — of course you will, there’s always another word — but it probably won’t be as good as your first one, or as close to what you really mean.
As the book ends, Stephen King takes us through his late-life trauma — getting hit by a careless driver as he walks along a Maine highway. His recovery is long. And painful. The idea of writing seems very distant.
One day, his wife helps him to his desk. He lasts an hour and forty minutes. He writes 500 words. When he stops, he’s dripping with sweat and howling with pain.
But none of that is the point. The point is that he did it. And, the next day, did it again, a little longer. And, eventually, finished his book — which is this book.
“The scariest moment is always just before you start,” he tells us.
Oh, what a friend we have in Stephen.
