Luke’s Reviews > On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft > Status Update

These sections were all about description and dialogue and other things like that. It’s almost all very enlightening and useful advice, but King starts off the dialogue section by writing an example of an “uneducated character” and it comes off as exactly the kind of racially insensitive writing he’s often criticized for. Anyways, it’s Christmas and I’ve been up since 1 AM, unable to fall back to sleep!

In these sections, King talks about his strict writing regiment that he follows when working on a something new. Now I understand how he churns out so many books. He talks about finding a good room to write in, and how all it really needs is a door you can close. I guess I can never be a writer then, cause the only private place to write in my house is my bed room, and it unfortunately doesn’t even have a door.

In these sections, I learned that Stephen King despises adverbs and the passive voice, and he calls them the tools of a timid writer. He gives a lot of great writing advice, but instead of thinking about applying it to my own writing, it’s actually inspired me a bit. It would be fun to write a particularly timid character who exclusively speaks in the passive voice and uses adverbs whenever applicable.

I’ve reached the end of the autobiographical part of the book. These last few sections were all about his history with addiction. Apparently when he first wrote The Shining, he didn’t even realize he was actually writing about himself. He also talked about how Misery and The Tommyknockers were inspired by his addiction issues, so now I want to read The Tommyknockers (even though most people say it’s not great).

I can’t believe I didn’t read this book sooner. I’m not even up to the part where he starts to give writing advice yet, but I’m already feeling inspired to write my own stories again. Stephen King had an interesting blue-collar life before he became the most famous American writer of the last 50ish years. He met his wife at a poetry club in college. Too bad my college only had boring ass science nerd clubs.

Hard to believe that back in the 50s and 60s you could just write a short story, send it to a magazine, and hope they paid you for it and published it. The internet was a mistake. Capitalism was a mistake. Starting this book was definitely not a mistake.

Oh yeah, now this is exactly what I needed I think. Love how it has started, with King telling stories from his own childhood. I can certainly see how his upbringing inspired his books. It’s been too long since I read a King book, glad im rectifying that.