On Writing by Stephen King
It was almost fifty years ago that Stephen King was living in a trailer. In the day, he first worked in a local mill, then as a teacher at a private school. In whatever other time allowed, he’d concentrate on his writing; short stories and novels, one of which frustrated him to such an extent he dumped it in a wastebasket only for his wife to discover it and insist that the project be seen through to the end. That book, as it happens, would become King’s first published novel. Carrie, which sold over one million copies in its first year as a paperback, established him as a powerhouse in American publishing, and of course, ensured that he would never have to live in a trailer again. It was a twist of faith so dramatic you could say it’d been written, and indeed, it probably had been a thousand times over in the daydreams of countless aspiring novelists before him.
The dream of being a writer can be a little different to some other creative ambitions. If you were to take up watercolour painting, for example, I doubt that you’d set yourself the goal of having an exhibition in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. You’d probably just be happy to push your skills to the limit and maybe build up a decent social media following along the way. However, I don’t think there’s a writer among us who hasn’t approached their keyboard with the intention of bashing out a chapter only to pause and imagine what it would be like to have their completed work become a bestseller. There’s just a higher degree of narcissism involved in the whole process, but that isn’t to say it’s entirely unhealthy, and in actuality, it can be just as much of a motivator for a writer to hone their craft as the love of the craft itself. Regardless, writers who’ve given in to their drive for popular success can sometimes be thought of as gutted of any integrity or worth.
Commercial writers, King would say, just don’t get respect.
It’s this fact that he takes issue with at the beginning of his book, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. And while the book provides plenty of practical and inspirational writing advice, I found that it was most enjoyable in how it offered a window into the mind of Stephen King the man as much as it did Stephen King the writer.
To begin with, King does seem to care about the construction of a sentence. He speaks about his love of grammar, his famous distaste for adverbs, and his respect for the well-known writing guide, The Elements of Style by E.B. White and William Strunk Jr. Given that King actually taught writing before he made it to the big time it’s no surprise he’s well able to express his love for the techniques of it in his own guide. Still, if it’s a broader understanding of communication and the English language you’re looking for, you’d be better served sticking to The Elements of Style, because as far as grammar instruction goes, it’s actually where King cribs most of his lessons from. As ever, what he brings to the table is a good story.
On Writing is really as much of an autobiography as it is a manual for writing. It takes you from King’s childhood as a somewhat neglected boy, through his years as a struggling writer, and perhaps the even tougher years as a successful one, a period in which he battled with drug and alcohol addiction. Throughout it all, he interweaves the narrative with anecdotes about the writing of each of his most popular novels and dedicates individual sections to his actual writing advice. These sections are mostly separated from one another, though it’s evident that even when he’s talking about something like the babysitter who used to fart on him or how far he’d hitchhike to go see a good movie, he’s demonstrating what the rules of writing look like when they’re put into practice. On this level alone it makes for an interesting read, but on another, it’s a fascinating insight into what makes the man tick, and not necessarily in a way that he intended.
The babysitter story, for example, escalates to the point that it could only be called abuse. King also recognises that his mother wasn’t around enough as a child simply because their lower economic status meant she had to work so often and he reveals the pain of losing her at such a young age. But he doesn’t draw many parallels between all of this and his years as an addict. Now, in fairness, maybe that’s because there aren’t any parallels to draw, but it sometimes feels like he doesn’t want to probe the possibilities merely because he’s satisfied with simpler explanations as they are. He drank so much, as far as he’s concerned, because that’s what men in the writing industry did at the time. Similarly, his view writing isn’t subjected to intense scrutiny. Quality prose is just a craft comparable to that of carpentry, with tools that have a defined purpose. At times it can all come off as a little macho. It would seem Stephen King has some egotistical drive to assert that his view of writing is just as admirable as that of James Joyce or William Faulkner. I can’t fault him for his viewpoint, to be honest. In fact, I’m certain that William Faulkner would have had a harder time writing The Shining than Stephen King would have had writing As I Lay Dying. And in a way, I kind of admire how far his ego pushed him to keep at the novel-writing game. I mean there are more exciting things to do after you’ve got a couple of million dollars in your bank account and you’ve knocked back a six-pack of beer than putting together a book about a rabid dog – a process, he says, during which he was so high he can’t even remember writing it. So when you ask the question of what Stephen King cares about, it would seem that the answer is clear.
Writing. At a basic construction level. In all its forms. In every way, it can be explored. Even when he was strung out on drugs and alcohol, the search for an incredible story was the be-all and end-all for the man. Except that he probably produced his worst work in those years. Cujo might have its fans but it’s generally considered to be a mess of a book. It wasn’t until Stephen King went into recovery and found his way back to his family that he started creating genuinely compelling novels again.
“Read a lot, read everywhere. Read good books. Read bad books. And love reading. Love writing. You’re not a writer if you don’t love these things.”It’s good advice. King includes it towards On Writing’s end. But what’s even more important, he says, is to make sure you don’t put your desk at the centre of your room. There should always be space for somebody else to join you. At the end of the day, all of his commercial success just made him hungrier than before. It was a pit that couldn’t be filled and I suspect it’s what many other writers feel when they’re perched atop the bestseller lists for the very first time. I’m sure the idea has worked its way into some of King’s more chilling horror stories. But this time at least it seemed to have a happy end. Because Stephen King realised it’s only when you care about people and things beyond yourself that you start to feel whole again.
