On Writing (review)

Welcome to BillWardWriter.com! If you're a fan of Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror -- whether reading it, watching it, or writing it -- then you've come to the right place. Go ahead and subscribe to my RSS feed so you don't miss a thing. Go on and click it already, it won't hurt you. I swear it won't.

. . . put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support-system for art. It’s the other way around.

• Title: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
• Author: Stephen King
• Genre: Nonfiction — Writing
• Year:2000

At some point in the middle of writing this book — On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft — Stephen King nearly died. The events of the accident that almost killed him are recounted at the very end of the book in a section entitled “On Living: A Postscript,” but they form a powerful coda through which everything else in the book, which is at least as much a celebration of the writer’s life as a primer on the craft of writing, is magnified and given a kind of gravity that elevates it beyond its humble intentions. Earlier in the book King, in what could be construed as his thesis, remarks that a person may come to writing for whatever reason, but the one thing they must not do is come to it lightly — and in this memoir the serious business of writing and the serious business of life are inseparable.

We all have some idea of who Stephen King is, right or wrong, but On Writing provides a look at the man through the lens of his craft. While not King’s autobiography, perhaps it should be, as it addresses his early years with an eye toward his future career. The first part of On Writing, then, is the part King calls his “C.V.,” an autobiographical look at some of the events and early writing experiences that formed him into the writer he is today. Recounting events from the traumatic to the absurd — the ear-drum piercing needles he received from doctors as a child, the enormous babysitter that used to sit on him to pass gas — King’s journey through his early years reads in some places, perhaps not surprisingly, like a Stephen King novel. It’s an effecting and interesting look at his life, a rags-to-riches story that gives an idea of how, in King’s words, one writer was formed.

King also deals frankly with his addictions in this section, recounting disturbing details of his drinking and drug use. Disturbing not because they are of the ‘falling to pieces, waking up in a strange city’ variety of druggie adventures, but because they are the insidious, everyday struggles of a family man who continued to work hard at maintaining his enormous success but could not get away from his own demons. King tackles the mythic stature of the addicted writer squarely, in a warning to anyone that thinks art must be fueled by self-destruction.

In the next two sections, “Toolbox” and “On Writing,” King talks of his practical approaches to the craft. Strictly speaking, there is nothing new here, no great insights that haven’t been covered in other books on the topic. But, as King states, On Writing is short because most books about writing are stuffed full of bullshit. King doesn’t bullshit the reader, and if he does repeat things that have been said in many places and in many ways, that’s because those things are fundamentally true. So when he rails against passive voice, says the adverb is not your friend, and speaks of good description as being as much about what is left out as what is said, he is reframing basic truths that have to be absorbed by every writer. If reading about them again gets the message across, then it doesn’t hurt to repeat the information.

And that is at the essence of the book — while other writing books may contain much of the same injunctions, they are not written by Stephen King. Like his work or not, one cannot deny his depth of experience and success at crafting effective stories. He writes with an easy confidence and casual familiarity that render his memoir into a conversation between friends — or between mentor and student. What On Writing succeeds at so well, what so many other books lack, is the infusing of the author’s personality into the work to the point that the reader becomes emotionally invested in the message — and is inspired by it. While it contains a fair amount of practical advice, like cutting ten percent between the first or second draft, or letting a manuscript go cold before doing a final edit, On Writing is really about inspiring by example. And when King finally does recount his accident, and the slow, painful journey back to health after his near-death experience — a recovery made in large part because of his love of writing — we are presented with an undeniable example of the power of art to transform lives.

As should be obvious, this book is a must for fledgling writers who are fans of King. But its appeal goes far beyond that, and I would not hesitate to recommend it to anyone interested in the craft of writing. It is part absorbing first-hand account of the writer’s life, and part no-nonsense primer, but the whole ads up to an inspiring look at art and life.

• On Writing at Amazon
• Stephen King’s website