I enjoyed reading On Writing by Stephen King. It was informative, instructional; light-hearted and serious in all the right places. Stephen King avails the beginner writer an opportunity to learn from an old pro; an opportunity that many budding writers crave. Published in 2000 and reprinted in 2010, it offers timeless advice on how to be a better writer and hopefully a widely read one.
He uses his stories about growing up in middle-class America to reinforce that while writing is a talent and a call, it is also a skill that should be improved. He wasn’t born an old pro, a myth that he dispels with his recount of his first boss editing his work.
“When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story,” he said. “When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the parts that are not the story.”
For those of us dreaming of the New Yorker’s bestselling list, his declaration that a bad writer can never be good or a good writer great seems counter to the advice he is giving or the dream he is selling. However, when you complete
The beauty of On Writing is its simplicity. There is no maridadi. He is telling you how to get your engine running efficiently. So efficiently that you will get through the despair of writer’s block, the over-indulgence of inspiration and the terror of self-doubt. Your engine will work if you apply what he says of course.
“What follows is everything I know about how to write good fiction. I’ll be as brief as possible, because your time is valuable and so is mine, and we both understand that the hours we spend talking about writing is time we don’t spend actually doing it.”
King’s approach to writing calls for a great degree of awareness; of yourself, your craft and your subject. A point he demonstrates when he shows us why he loves his wife.
“In the discussion that followed Tab’s reading, it became clear to me that she understood her own poem. She knew exactly what she had meant to say and had said most of it…Tabby was in one of Jim Bishop’s rocking chairs that night. I was sitting on the floor beside her. I put my hand on her calf as she spoke, cupping the curve of her warm flesh through warm stocking. She smiled at me, I smiled back. Sometimes these things are not accident. I’m almost sure of it.”
“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.”
“Good writing… teaches the learning writer about style, graceful narration, plot development, the creation of believable characters and truth-telling.”
His book list has no African authors but I forgive him. He was not writing a canon, although by virtue of his status it is always implied, he simply demonstrates that what we read inspires or infects what we write. Therefore, choose well. Choose often.
We may never be him or Chimamanda or Rushdie but we definitely can learn to write well enough that people will read us without throwing up. So, pay attention not just to what he says but how he says it, and you will write better than you did before you read it.
On Writing has had such an effect on me that even as I write this review, I ask, is this word necessary? Does it push
I wonder.
I have added my reading list because I can never resist the urge to tell people what to read.
Dust – Yvonne Adhiambo Owour
Tail of the Bluebird – Nii Ayikwei Parkes
Zoo City – Lauren Beukes
Disgrace – J.M Coetzee
The will to die – Can Themba