Alex James's Blog: AlexJamesNovels Blog - Posts Tagged "memoir"

‘When you write a book, you spend day after day scanning and identifying the trees. When you’re done, you have to step back and look at the forest.’ Stephen King.

On Writing is Stephen King’s semi-autobiography and writer’s tips book. For the first 120 pages, Stephen King summarises his writing history, from a small publishing enterprise with his brother when he was young to writing for magazines at university. We get a number of fragmented ‘glimpses’ into his family, jobs he has held, and some of his early writing successes and failures prior to first publication. These ‘glimpses’ showed what made him the writer he became. Stephen King has since battled through family death, drug addiction, and alcoholism. At the end of this agonising road he came to the conclusion that ‘art is a support system for life’ and not the other way around. It’s a quote I intend to keep in mind.

The second half of On Writing provided writing tips to the aspiring writer; tips King has learnt to use to edit his writing and keep readers engaged with his stories. There are even a few examples of editing at the end of the book. Whether it’s the use of adverbs or dialogue attribution, King keeps it simple and relatable, without assuming a profound knowledge of English grammar or creative writing. The tone of the writing wasn’t snobbish at all. In fact, it was a surprise to read about his background. Without knowing any different, I wrongfully assumed the situation once-a-bestselling-author-always-has-been-a-bestselling-author .While reading, I felt like King was teaching me straightforward lessons while having a conversation.

Criticism: I didn’t agree with the following statements: ‘it is impossible to make a competent writer out of a good one’, ‘equally impossible to make a great writer out of a good one’, ‘if you’re a bad writer, no one can help you become a good one, or even a competent one’, and ‘if you’re good and want to be great fuhgeddaboudit’.

A lesson of note was that although King had been writing since a young age, it was his commitment, perseverance, and his willingness to listen to others that made him a successful person and author.
On Writing is candid, evocative, and bursting with writer advice coming from experience and hindsight. King delivers with personality and humour. On Writing is more than a book, it’s an experience!

I only had a vague idea who Chris Packham was until I saw the documentary on television, about his having Asperger’s. I thought it was a bold positive statement that instilled confidence in others with the condition, like me. I was lucky enough to receive his memoir as a gift, and I read it with interest.

The first impressions are that we get an insight into Chris Packham's childhood and early adolescence: sights, smells, sensations, and behaviour towards people. His inventiveness and knowledge of the natural world, and at such a young age, is incredible. This unbelievable intelligence and drive continues throughout in the form of themed related memories when he was at different ages. I was more interested in his personality than the natural world, understandably, and many of his definitions went above my head but his behaviour and how he compared with others did not. Many of his difficulties resonated with me and provided me with an enhanced perspective on my own condition, where other people are concerned.

The message I got was that his life was a huge miserable struggle, yet it was also filled with wondrous highs – many that he created. His path to understanding himself took a long time, and most of his memories of note occurred at specific times in his life: when he was at school and when he went to see a psychiatrist.

The descriptions were complex, and weren’t always easy to absorb because of the number of terms, but this is a memoir of somebody interested in the natural world and I respected his style and understood enough to keep wanting to read an extra chapter. I had to look at the paragraphs rather than hear them, which was different.

Explaining Humans draws parallels between the author’s conditions/diagnoses, such as autism and ADHD, and the author’s interest in science, in order to devise coping strategies for the real world, including better thinking patterns where relationships are concerned at the micro and macro level. Sometimes it was like reading a sociology or philosophy book, though I found the content to be interesting, relevant, and individualistic, which I liked.

I’d often think ‘Oh, that’s interesting’, ‘just like me or someone I know’, or something similar. One of the best parts, I felt, was the author’s sense of humour hanging onto the end of sentences. Explaining Humans had been what I was looking for where autism was concerned, and I took great pleasure reading the author’s past experiences and then growth beyond these.

I struggled to understand many of the science-based strategies and how they could be made relevant. In this way, the book was less helpful than I had hoped. It was something that I had fun reading in the present, with curiosity, but it’s not something that will stick with me beyond that.

If you’re looking for an autism/ADHD book, or a ‘lighter’ read for science enthusiasts, you can’t go wrong giving Explaining Humans a try. It may inspire you in different ways.