Library Book #4

On Writing by Stephen King

So some of you may think "heck no, he scares me." And that's probably true. King is an absolute master at horror. But his book On Writing is fantastic. It tells of his journey to publication, explains his theory of "the writer's toolbox" and what he thinks you need inside and it delves into his philosophies on writing itself which contain many great things to remember.

King makes two statements that I particularly love. The first is "If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot." He insists there is no shortcut and I agree with him.

Then he goes on to explain that even for those that think they don't have reading time avaialable, there are creative ways to find some. This next comment is probably my favorite of all my writing books and all writers should adopt this as law and feel the luxury of living this way. He says "Reading at meals is considered rude in polite society, but if you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects. If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway."

Now does that mean as soon as your book is in print, you become the scourge on humanity? People cross streets to avoid brushing up against you, women cover babies and run screaming in horror? Of course not. But how many of you have written something you loved then wondered or worried about who it was going to offend?

Stop worrying. Be true to yourself and your art.

After receiving some truly odd contest scores once (perfect in preliminaries and lowest in finals complete with rude remarks), I asked a published author friend, Jane Graves/Sullivan, about this anomoly because it had happened more than once and the disparity was odd to me. She said "you are in the perfect place with your work - people either love it or hate it - but you're creating a strong emotion in them and that's what you want or you'll be a low mid-list writer forever."

WOW! That really opened my eyes. It was okay for people to hate my book because for everyone who absolutely detested my work, there would be people who thought it was the second coming of the great American love story. What a trade off! I can take a few tacky comments along with glowing praise. Who wouldn't?

Write your story your way, without concern for anyone else and what they think. Be true to yourself and your characters, your plot. After all, no one else has the stake in your writing that you do - don't sell yourself short when you can create huge emotion in your readers. Even if it's bad.