Sundays with Stephen King’s “On Writing”
A series featuring reflections on writing from the famed author’s memoir.
A series featuring reflections on writing from the famed author’s memoir.
I had not read Stephen King’s memoir On Writing for several years when it occurred to me to do so again. While at it, why not share reflections from the renowned writer in a weekly Sunday series at Go Into The Story?
King is a prolific author. Fair to say that is an understatement. One need only glance at a roster of his written works to determine that. If any contemporary writer has earned the right to reflect on the craft, it would be King. However, that is not the motivation he had in writing his memoir. This excerpt from the ‘First Foreword’ of On Writing explains the genesis of the book, a fateful exchange with Amy Tan, fellow writer and member of an authors’ charity rock music group The Remainders.
One night while we were eating Chinese before a gig in Miami Beach, I asked Amy if there was any one question she was never asked during the Q-and-A that follows almost every writer’s talk — that question you never get to answer when you’re standing in front of a group of author-struck fans and pretending you don’t put your pants on one leg at a time like everyone else. Amy paused, thinking it over very carefully, and miss said: “No one ever asks about the language.”
I owe an immediate debt of gratitude to her for saying that. I had been playing with the idea of writing a little book about writing for a year or more at that time, but had held back because I didn’t trust my own motivations — why did I want to write about writing? What made me think I had anything worth saying?
The easy answer is that someone who has sold as many books of fiction as I have must have something worthwhile to say about writing it, but the easy answer isn’t always the truth. Colonel Sanders sold a hell of a lot of fried chicken, but I’m not sure anyone wants to know how he made it. If I was going to be presumptuous enough to tell people how to write, I felt there had to be a better reason than my popular success. Put another way, I didn’t want to write a book, even a short one like this, that would leave me feeling like a literary gasbag or a transcendental asshole. There are enough of those books — and those writers — on the market already, thanks.
But Amy was right: nobody ever asks about the language. They ask the DeLillos and the Updikes and the Styrons, but they don’t ask popular novelists. Yet many of us proles also care about the language, in our humble way, and care passionately about the art and craft of telling stories on paper. What follows is an attempt to put down, briefly and simply, how I came to the craft, what I know about it now, and how it’s done. It’s about the day job; it’s about the language.
My intention is similar to the Sundays with Ray Bradbury series: Each week as I re-read King’s memoir, print notable excerpts at Go Into The Story to inspire our creativity and conversation about the craft.
Today: From the twenty-fifth anniversary edition of On Writing, excerpts from pp. 237–238.
Other than Where do you get your ideas?, the questions any publishing writer hears most frequently from those who want to publish are How do you get an agent? and How do you make contact with people in the world of publishing?
The tone in which these questions are asked is often bewildered, sometimes chagrined, and frequently angry. There is a commonly held suspicion that most newcomers who actually succeed in getting their books published broke through because they had an in, a contact, a rabbi in the business. The underlying assumption is that publishing is just one big, happy, incestuously closed family.
It’s not true. Neither is it true that agents are a snooty, superior bunch that would die before allowing their ungloved fingers to touch an unsolicited manuscript. (Well okay, yeah, there are a few like that.) The fact is that agents, publishers, and editors are all looking for the next hot writer who can sell a lot of books and make lots of money… and not just the next hot young writer, either; Helen Santmyer was in a retirement home when she published … And Ladies of the Club. Frank McCourt was quite a bit younger when he published Angela’s Ashes, but he’s still no spring chicken.
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You should have an agent, and if your work is salable, you will have only a moderate amount of trouble finding one. You’ll probably be able to find one even if your work isn’t saleable, as long as it shows promise.
I know very little about the book publishing world, there are some significant differences in a screenwriter seeking representation and — apparently — a writer whose area of focus is novels, longform nonfiction, short stories, and the rest. Such as:
- Generally speaking, lit agent do not read unsolicited material. However, many managers do. Moreover, whereas agents typically focus on deal-making, most managers are more involved with their writer clients, even on a creative and story development level. Therefore, the question a screenwriter should be asking is not, How do I get an agent, but How do I get a manager.
[For an article on the basic differences between an agent and manager, go here.]
- King’s confidence that a writer with “salable” work will only have a “moderate amount of trouble” finding representation feels overly optimistic as far as Hollywood is concerned for at least two reasons: (1) For a business environment in which as William Goldman famously noted, “Nobody knows anything,” I suspect it’s actually pretty rare when there is a unanimity of opinion about any potential project being a “salable” one. (2) The sheer volume of content funneled through the Hollywood acquisition and development system each year is tsunami-like (I’ve read anywhere between 30–50,000 submissions per annum).
I doubt there’s a working screenwriter who would say with any confidence that an aspiring writer would have a “moderate amount of trouble” finding representation in Hollywood. Even if that were the case, I think it’s better to take the attitude evident throughout the rest of King’s book and that is this: You need to work your ass off as a writer. Reading. Writing. Do that a lot. Put in the hours. Then more hours. Days. Weeks. Months. Better to think that in order to find success in landing a representative, you need to push yourself really, really hard in learning the craft and manifesting that understanding, as well as your creativity, storytelling chops, and unique voice on the page.
That said, King’s observation about producing “salable” material is completely relevant in Hollywood. That pertains not only to the story itself, but also your potential as a writer. Making movies or creating television series is a collaborative process and that means you, as a writer, do well to demonstrate your talent on the page, but also your ability to be “good in a room.” You are “salable” as someone who can work with other creative people in bringing a movie or TV series into being.
Circling back to the first part of today’s excerpt from On Writing, one thing that is completely the same between writers seeking to get published in book form and writers hoping to sell a screenplay is that question: How do I get representation? For my extensive thoughts on the matter, check out this article: The Path of Least Resistance to Get Representation in Hollywood. It’s not the only way to get a manager, but it’s an approach that works.
But it always comes back to what you produce on the page. That is where your focus should lie: Writing a damn good script.
Come back next week and many weeks thereafter for more in the Sundays with Stephen King’s “On Writing” series.
Twitter: @StephenKing