Book Review: 'On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft'

(C) 2010 Simon & Schuster 

Long, long ago, at an early age so far back in my timeline that I can’t exactly remember, I decided that I would become a writer someday.

Sure, like most boys in my peer group, I had dreams of pursuing other, more traditionally “manly” careers. At various times in my childhood I dreamed of becoming an astronaut, a pilot, a soldier, a Marine, and – at one point – even President of the United States. But reality – in the shape of a physical disability – flattened most of those naively unrealistic career dreams as surely as an African elephant will squash a ripe tomato.

Luckily, I fell in love with the written word early in life; family lore has it that my maternal grandmother Ines taught me how to read – using ABC blocks – before I was two years old. (Mom used to tell a story – perhaps apocryphal – about how she and my father returned to Miami after their last trip to Paris and my grandmother proudly showed them the unlikely spectacle of a toddler reading a newspaper article with no help from an adult. I don’t recall this event. At my age, the oldest memory fragments I have are from when I was three or so, and even then, I don’t think they’re accurate memories. But I digress.) I have always loved to read – a habit I inherited from my mother and other relatives, and somewhere along the line I decided that if I couldn’t pursue those other boyish dreams that seemed full of excitement and danger, I’d become a storyteller.

Three years ago, shortly after my mother died after a long illness, I promised my friends – via social media – that I would sit down and fulfill one of my long-held hopes: I would write my first novel.

Now, I’ve written a lot of stuff over the past 45 years – letters, term papers, school newspaper articles, letters to the editors of various news publications - several of which have been published in the Miami Herald and Time magazine – and hundreds of reviews for various web sites and blogs. I have even co-written a couple of screenplays – neither of which has been produced, but at least I learned another writing style/method.

I’ve also written – and self-published – a short story, Reunion, as well as a collection of movie reviews, Save Me the Aisle Seat.

However, I’ve never written anything longer than a short story. The closest that I’ve come to doing so – other than Reunion – is a 40-page “novel” I wrote for my ninth grade English class back in 1980. (Ms. Allen was teaching a unit on the novel as a literary form and assigned us to write our own novel – following the structure she taught us – that would count for one third of our final grade. As I recall, the minimum page-count was 20 pages; I turned in Hypercraft One: A Sound of Armageddon on time – and at double the page count.)

Since writing a novel is a huge undertaking, I want to learn as much as I can before tackling it. So, I’ve bought an armful of  how-to books that deal with various aspects of the writing process. Some of them deal specifically with the mechanics of plotting and creating dialogue, while others are more general and cover all aspects of writing fiction – including the do’s and don’ts of writing, how to sell your book, marketing strategy, and building your audience.

But the very first book I purchased is one that I’d always wanted to read; Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.

“Long live the King” hailed Entertainment Weekly upon publication of Stephen King’s On Writing. Part memoir, part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writer’s craft, comprising the basic tools of the trade every writer must have. King’s advice is grounded in his vivid memories from childhood through his emergence as a writer, from his struggling early career to his widely reported, near-fatal accident in 1999—and how the inextricable link between writing and living spurred his recovery. Brilliantly structured, friendly and inspiring, On Writing will empower and entertain everyone who reads it—fans, writers, and anyone who loves a great story well told.

Now, if you know anything about Stephen King besides the fact that he has written almost a library’s fiction section’s worth of novels, non-fiction books, short story anthologies, essays, several original screenplays and teleplays, and articles for various magazines, is that he is a warm and witty fellow despite his reputation as the Master of Horror. Now well into his seventies, Steve King is for many aspiring writers a source of inspiration as well as an example of what we shoot for when we speak of goals we seek to achieve. (I’ve been known to say to my friends and family, “Well, if I ever get to be a tenth as successful as Stephen King, I’ll be happy,” and my current favorite, “My story is selling well, but not ‘Stephen King-well.’ Yet.”

Originally published by Simon & Schuster in 2000 and reissued a decade later in a Tenth Anniversary Edition, On Writing is divided in two parts.

The first half of the book is, as the back-cover blurb advertises, a concise memoir that focuses primarily on Steve King’s long, productive, yet sometimes troubled life and career. While it is not a complete autobiography, the author gives us thumbnail sketches – some of which are quite vivid – of his childhood in Maine and Wisconsin, his early attempts as a writer, his short career as a high school English teacher (an experience that King has touched on in many of his novels, particularly in The Shining, ‘Salem’s Lot, and 11/22/63), his struggles to support his wife and children before his first novel, Carrie, became a best-seller, and, of course, his long and eventually successful battle with various addictions, particularly his dependence on cocaine and alcohol.

There are several Wow moments in the memoir part, including the somewhat stunning revelation that Steve King could not remember writing some of the books he wrote when he was in denial about his coke and drinking habits – believe it or not, you know the man had a problem with booze when he tells you that Tabitha, his wife, was at her wits’ end when she found out her hubby was drinking mouthwash when no other beverages were handy.

But my favorite bit of the memoir is when King describes how he wrote On Writing as he was recovering from the near-fatal accident he suffered when he was hit by a speeding van near his home in Bangor, Maine.

I actually began On Writing in November or December of 1997, and although it usually takes me only three months to finish the first draft of a book, this one was still only half-completed eighteen months later. That was because I'd put it aside in February or March of 1998, not sure how to continue, or if I should continue at all. Writing fiction was almost as much fun as it had ever been, but every word of the nonfiction book was a kind of torture. It was the first book I had put aside uncompleted since The Stand, and On Writing spent a lot longer in the desk drawer.

In June of 1999, I decided to spend the summer finishing the damn writing book -- let Susan Moldow and Nan Graham at Scribner decide if it was good or bad, I thought. I read the manuscript over, prepared for the worst, and discovered I actually sort of liked what I had. The road to finishing it seemed clear-cut, too. I had finished the memoir ("C.V."), which attempted to show some of the incidents and life-situations which made me into the sort of writer I turned out to be, and I had covered the mechanics -- those that seemed most important to me, at least. What remained to be done was the key section, "On Writing," where I'd try to answer some of the questions I'd been asked in seminars and at speaking engagements, plus all those I wish I'd been asked...those questions about the language.

On the night of June seventeenth, blissfully unaware that I was now less than forty-eight hours from my little date with Bryan Smith (not to mention Bullet the rottweiler), I sat down at our dining room table and listed all the questions I wanted to answer, all the points I wanted to address. On the eighteenth, I wrote the first four pages of the "On Writing" section. That was where the work still stood in late July, when I decided I'd better get back to work...or at least try.

I didn't want to go back to work. I was in a lot of pain, unable to bend my right knee, and restricted to a walker. I couldn't imagine sitting behind a desk for long, even in my wheelchair. Because of my cataclysmically smashed hip, sitting was torture after forty minutes or so, impossible after an hour and a quarter. Added to this was the book itself, which seemed more daunting than ever -- how was I supposed to write about dialogue, character, and getting an agent when the most pressing thing in my world was how long until the next dose of Percocet?

Yet at the same time I felt I'd reached one of those crossroads moments when you're all out of choices. And I had been in terrible situations before which the writing had helped me get over -- had helped me forget myself for at least a little while. Perhaps it would help me again. It seemed ridiculous to think it might be so, given the level of my pain and physical incapacitation, but there was that voice in the back of my mind, both patient and implacable, telling me that, in the words of the Chambers Brothers, Time Has Come Today. It's possible for me to disobey that voice, but very difficult to disbelieve it.

In the end it was Tabby who cast the deciding vote, as she so often has at crucial moments in my life. I'd like to think I've done the same for her from time to time, because it seems to me that one of the things marriage is about is casting the tiebreaking vote when you just can't decide what you should do next.

My wife is the person in my life who's most likely to say I'm working too hard, it's time to slow down, stay away from that damn PowerBook for a little while, Steve, give it a rest. When I told her on that July morning that I thought I'd better go back to work, I expected a lecture. Instead, she asked me where I wanted to set up. I told her I didn't know, hadn't even thought about it.

She thought about it, then said: "I can rig a table for you in the back hall, outside the pantry. There are plenty of plug-ins -- you can have your Mac, the little printer, and a fan." The fan was certainly a must -- it had been a terrifically hot summer, and on the day I went back to work, the temperature outside was ninety-five. It wasn't much cooler in the back hall. 

  
Tabby spent a couple of hours putting things together, and that afternoon at four o'clock she rolled me out through the kitchen and down the newly installed wheelchair ramp into the back hall. She had made me a wonderful little nest there: laptop and printer connected side by side, table lamp, manuscript (with my notes from the month before placed neatly on top), pens, reference materials. Standing on the corner of the desk was a framed picture of our younger son, which she had taken earlier that summer.

"Is it all right?" she asked.

"It's gorgeous," I said, and hugged her. It was gorgeous. So is she.

The former Tabitha Spruce of Oldtown, Maine, knows when I'm working too hard, but she also knows that sometimes it’s the work that bails me out. She got me positioned at the table, kissed me on the temple, and then left me there to find out if I had anything left to say. It turned out I did.

The second half of On Writing is, of course, the promised “master class” for writers. As advertised, King gives the reader straightforward and easy-to-digest pointers on the craft of writing. Here, the guy who has written 50 novels – all of them best-sellers, even though King himself dislikes some of them and owns up to their various flaws – tells both aspiring writers and readers who simply want to know where authors get their ideas from, how much time it takes King to write a novel, and whether it’s okay to use profanity when writing dialogue.

For instance, here’s what King has to say about first drafts for novels and how long a writer should spend on one.

I believe the first draft of a book — even a long one — should take no more than three months…Any longer and — for me, at least — the story begins to take on an odd foreign feel, like a dispatch from the Romanian Department of Public Affairs, or something broadcast on high-band shortwave during a period of severe sunspot activity.

And here is some advice about how to go about the business of rewriting:

Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and get it right — as right as you can, anyway — it belongs to anyone who wants to read it. Or criticize it.

While much of what King writes in On Writing has been said – or written – in different ways by other writers or English teachers, much of what he says runs against the grain of what lots of “how to” books tell aspiring authors to do, or not to do.

For instance, one of the books I bought three years ago (a slim volume on how to write effective dialogue) tells you flat out to not use foul language if you can help it. It’s not necessary to drop the F-bomb in most stories, and – the author claims – reputable publishers frown on the use, no matter how sparingly it’s done, of “bad words” coming out of your characters’ mouths.

Not so, says King.

If I were a Henry James or Jane Austen sort of guy, writing only about toffs or smart college folks, I’d hardly ever have to use a dirty word or a profane phrase; I might never have had a book banned from America’s school libraries or gotten a letter from some helpful fundamentalist fellow who wants me to know that I’m going to burn in hell, where all my millions of dollars won’t buy me so much as a single drink of water. I did not, however, grow up among people of that sort. I grew up as a part of America’s lower middle class, and they’re the people I can write about with the most honesty and knowledge. It means that they say shit more than they say sugar when they bang their thumbs, but I’ve made my peace with that. Was never much at war with it in the first place, as a matter of fact.

Bottom line: If you are writing about people and want them to sound authentic in the reader’s mind, write dialogue that’s real and true. If your character is, say, a GI on the front lines somewhere in Normandy in the summer of 1944, don’t put cleaned-up-for-polite-society words in his mouth. Remember, this is a guy who is in an environment where the word “fuck” is used in various ways – as a noun, verb, and when coupled with the -ing suffix, as a descriptive adjective – on a regular basis and no one even blinks when it’s uttered.

Nearly 20 years after its first edition was published, Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft is a classic and insightful work about the mechanics of writing, the power of prose, and the importance of attention to detail, perseverance, and the love for language and storytelling. I found this book to be entertaining, informative, and extremely revealing. But most of all, I was inspired – as all writers ought to be – to follow King’s advice and write my own stories.

Thank you, Steve. And if I am even one-tenth as successful as you are, I’ll die a very happy man.