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. 235–237 in which King talks about the value — or not — of writing classes.
Another argument in favor of writing courses has to do with the men and women who teach them. There are thousands of talented writers at work in America, and only a few of them (I think the number might be as low as five per cent) support their families and themselves with their work.
— —
The solution for a good many underpaid creative writers is to teach what they know to others. This can be a nice thing, and it's nice when beginning writers have a chance to meet with and listen to veteran writers they may have long admired.
— —
You don't need writing classes or seminars anymore than you need this or any other book on writing. Faulkner learned his trade while working in the Oxford, Mississippi, post office. Other writers have learned the basics while serving in the Navy, working in steel mills, or doing time in America’s finer crossbar hotels. I learned the most valuable most (and commercial) part of my life's work while washing motel sheets and restaurant table cloths at the New Franklin Laundry in Bangor. You learn best by reading a lot and writing a lot, and the most valuable lessons of all are the ones you teach yourself. These lessons almost always occur with the study door closed. Writing-class discussions can often be intellectually stimulating and great fun, but they also often stray far afield from the actual nuts-and-bolts of business of writing.
As someone who does teach writing, I am — of course — prejudiced in this matter. I would not teach if I believed what transpires in (and often outside) of the classes I oversee to be worthless. In fact, I know quite the opposite is true. Many writers I have taught have gone on to successful careers in Hollywood as screenwriters, filmmakers, TV writers, and showrunners. Others as novelists. As for those who have yet to achieve their dreams? I feel confident in saying that nearly all of them advanced in their understanding of the craft and their abilities as writers based on what they learned in my classes.
King appears to assume that a writer must spend money in order to be educated by a teacher, but if that were true when he first penned On Writing, it no longer is. Speaking strictly about screenwriting, there are gobs and gobs of free educational content online, everything from podcasts to blogs to videos to interviews. My blog, for instance, offers tens of thousands of articles on writing, all of them free of charge. In fact, this week I am contacting writers whose scripts made the 2021 Black List. Here are just a few quotes from the writers I’ve emailed:
- “I follow your blog and really appreciate all your fantastic content and posts. It’s been a great resource for me as a writer. And I would be absolutely honored to be interviewed for it.”
- “Yes we’d love to do an interview we’ve been following your blog for ten years!!”
- “I’ve been following your account for quite a while so this is super exciting.”
- “I’ve been a fan for years and reading your blog was a big part of my screenwriting journey over the years so I’d be honored to do an interview with you.”
Even Twitter, which generally is pretty much a social cesspool, is a resource for free content as professional writers from time to time will compose a thread of tweets on a specific subjects related to the craft. On my blog, I’ve aggregated dozens of these threads as Screenwriting Tweetstorms.
However, I echo King’s sentiment: “You learn best by reading a lot and writing a lot, and the most valuable lessons of all are the ones you teach yourself.” Years ago, I coined a screenwriting mantra: Watch movies. Read scripts. Write pages. No matter what courses you may take, books you read, videos you watch, podcasts you listen to, the practice of directly engaging primary source material, i.e., movies, TV shows, scripts, books, and writing daily is not only invaluable … it is also essential.
Every writer is different. Every story is different. There is no right way to write. Each writer must determine their own path to learn the craft.
Sometimes working with a teacher or mentor is the best path to take.
Come back next week and many weeks thereafter for more in the Sundays with Stephen King’s “On Writing” series.
Twitter: @StephenKing