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, an excerpt from pp. 153–154 in which King speaks to the importance of writing every day.
Once I start work on a project, I don't stop and I don't slow down unless I absolutely have to. If I don't write every day, the characters begin to stale off in my mind — they begin to seem like characters instead of real people. The tale’s narrative cutting edge starts to rust and I begin to lose my hold on the story’s plot and pace. Worst of all, the excitement of spinning something new begins to fade. The work starts to feel like work, and for most writers that is the smooch of death. Writing is at its best — always, always, always — when it is a kind inspired play for the writer. I can write in cold blood if I have to, but I like it best when it's fresh and almost too hot to handle.
I used to tell interviewers that I wrote every day except for Christmas, the Fourth of July, and my birthday. That was a lie. I told them that because if you agree to an interview you have to say something, and it plays better if it's something at least half-clever. Also, I didn't want to sound like a workaholic dweeb (just a workaholic, I guess). The truth is that when I'm writing, I write every day, workaholic dweeb or not. That includes Christmas, the Fourth, and my birthday (at my age you try to ignore your goddam birthday anyhow). And when I'm not working, I'm not working at all, although during those periods of full stop I usually feel it loose ends with myself and have trouble sleeping. For me, not working is the real work. When I'm writing, it's all the playground, and the worst three hours I ever spent there were still pretty damn good.
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I like to get to 10 pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words. That's 180,000 words over a three-month span, a goodish length for a book — something in which the reader can get heavily lost, if the tale is done well and stays fresh. On some days those ten pages come easily; I am up and out and doing errands by 11:30 in the morning, perky as a rat in liverwurst. More frequently, as I grow older I find myself eating lunch at my desk and finishing the days work around 1:30 in the afternoon. Sometimes, when the words come hard, I am still fiddling around a teatime. Either way is fine with me, but only under dire circumstances do I allow myself to shut down before I get my 2,000 words.
At my blog Go Into The Story, I have interviewed over 200 hundred writers (LINK) and if there is one piece of advice which feels predominate among their responses, it’s this: Write every day.
The mere fact I had a streak of consecutive days blogging which eventually reached 4,428 before I was waylaid by major shoulder surgery speaks to my personal commitment to daily writing, I had hoped The Streak was also an inspiration to others to do the same.
If I can do it … you can do it.
What’s great about King’s observations in this regard is he provides a concrete rationale why it is important to write every day:
The tale’s narrative cutting edge starts to rust and I begin to lose my hold on the story’s plot and pace. Worst of all, the excitement of spinning something new begins to fade.
By writing every day, you not only build up momentum, you also sustain and even deepen a connection to your characters. When you miss a day or two, that connection begins to wane. Moreover, there’s this:
When I’m writing, it’s all the playground, and the worst three hours I ever spent there were still pretty damn good.
The key there, it seems to me, is this part of the word: play. If we manage to hit a state of flow where we have silenced the voices of negativity and embraced a spirit of freedom with our writing, it truly can feel like play. The spontaneity of surprising words emerging from our fingertips can engender a sense of delight which then fuels our desire to begin the next day’s writing session.
As King acknowledges, each writer is different. However, there is such an inherent value in writing every day, the approach transcends variable writer personalities. Make it a point of your writing philosophy to sit your ass down onto a chair every day … and pound out some pages.
Come back next week and many weeks thereafter for more in the Sundays with Stephen King’s “On Writing” series.
Twitter: @StephenKing