Stephen King is anti-plotting

King's aversion to plotting novels stuck with me. He writes that, "Plotting and the spontaneity of real creation aren't compatible." Instead, he thinks of a situation and begins without planning the ending. He lets the characters and story take shape as he goes along.

This seemed unusual to me at first. I've heard authors talk about jotting down a rough outline of a novel before they start, to prevent writer's block and keep from going off on tangents. King's view resonates with what I've heard other writers say: once you set pen to paper, a story can take you someplace unexpected. The advice not to plot is easier said than done. Without at least a vague idea where a story is going my writing would meander around without saying anything important.

Foreword and There After (Response on Stephen King’s "On Writing")

I tend to never read the Foreword (or Preface, Prelude, Introduction, etc.) of a book because most of them tend be daunting, long, tedious and very boring. Sometimes as a reader you do not quite understand what is being talked about until you read the actual book. Sometimes these beginning are just spoilers and then your not motivated to read such a book. And I was ready to do just that skip the Forewords (yes, more then one) of Stephen King’s On Writing because that is just something I do sadly. However, while skimming past the Second Foreword I noticed the word bull@#$! Mention a few times and decided well now why would the author go and swear in the beginning like that, and so it began the reading of the forward.

King wrote in his Foreword (his first one) that as a writer “he care[d] about the language…and care[d] passionately about the art and craft of telling stories on paper” (King 9) and it is because of this idea he choose to write this book. Expecting this book to be more textbook then memoir-esq I was prepared to be told how I should write and how I should display my thoughts on paper but I ended up being intrigued by a different idea once I began to read:

Right away, King states that a writer is a person who has a nature to express their creativity and imagination differently. Much like being gifted at a certain type of sport and excelling far better then those around you. Everyone through practice can choose to play any sport of their choosing but sometimes there are people who just achieve skill naturally. From my analysis it seems that King is saying that everyone can be a writer and in fact that he imagines that many people are but not everyone can excel at being an author. I use the word author because it is separate from a writer. If you can sit down and write short story after short story then you’re an author. If you can take the time and write a critical essay or a scholarly journal then you’re an author. It is what separates you from just being a writer. College students, high school students and work professionals write things every day, but usually for assignment. There is no sense of imaginative creativity involved that an author would use to write a critical essay or a short story because you are already given the idea of what write.

The build up of personal events to the one important even helped give me a sense of who King was before he became a writer and an author. His childhood was colorful to say the least and through his creative childhood he was allowed to develop his skills as a writer. His mother encouraging him to stop copying the comics he loved and create his own stories was a great novelty for King. His mother was the first person he wrote his stories for and she was the first person to buy them. It seems to me to be a very good lesson that a parent should encourage their kids especially if they have potential. King’s mother never told him to try to do something else, but she helped him understand the importance of his own words by showing him that they mean something. That is why it “was the first buck [he] made in [the] business” (King 29).

What book would you like to see back in print?

Bookfinder has released a list of "the top 10 most sought-after out-of-print books in America in 2008." The only "celebrity' book on the list is Madonna's photo book Sex (quickly sold sold, then tanked, now desired again). I'm kind of amazed at some of the others, and especially at the last two, which suggest a continuing market for high-quality books about craft.

What books would you like most to see republished? One of my childhood favorites was D'Aulaires' Book of Norse Myths, which was out of print for decades and finally republished. This was published by New York Review Books, which specializes in bringing out-of-print classics back into publciation. There's a brisk business republishing great books. Another great publisher in this area is Hard Case Crime, which republishes old classic hardboiled detective novels alongside new novels in the same style. They also commission new, slightly slutty paintings for all their covers. I discovered the just-deceased Donald Westlake through Hard Case Crime.

New York Review Books publishes classic fiction, nonfiction, and children's books. Hard Case Crime publishes old and new hardboiled fiction. What books would you like to see back in print? Can you imagine a publisher that would specialize in a particular area of reprinting? How would you go about it? Questions for thought and possible repsonse.

"I mean stony."

That's a line from page 71 of On Writing. The whole paragraph reads:

Trudging from the car to our apartment building on that summer afternoon was a low point. I was carrying Naomi and a tote-bag full of baby survival equipment (bottles, lotions, diapers, sleep suits, undershirts, socks) while Tabby carried Joe, who had spit up on her. She was dragging a sack of dirty diapers behind her. We both knew Naomi needed THE PINK STUFF, which was what we called liquid amoxicillin. THE PINK STUFF was expensive, and we were broke. I mean stony.

There's a lot to love about this passage. I identify with it because, as a parent of young children, I also refer to amoxicillin as "the pink stuff." I also love the style of the parenthetical list, which has no final "and" (that's called asyndeton, if you need to know). But the last sentence really gets me. The term stony is not something I'd heard before as a reference to poverty; though Webster's says it's British slang for "stone broke," I feel pretty sure that it's authentic King, which means Maine, which connects different localities in a common slang. There's a lot to learn from passages like this about what King will later discuss as being honest, being truthful with language. It rings like that.

Stephen King's "On Writing"- Response

I have always wanted to read this book so I'm glad I finally have the opportunity.  I have only read 2 of Stephen King's novels (several of his short stories also) but I have read a decent amount of his non fiction (like his column for Entertainment Weekly) and I have seen several of the movies made from his novels so I do feel familiar with him as a writer.  I think he has a very distinct voice.  I really enjoyed the excerpts from his childhood, I think it gives us a great window into his personality and the ability to see reasons why he became the writer he did.  I think it is also nice to see how he struggled through life just like everyone else...I think famous people are often put on a pedestal and "normal" people tend to focus on how lucky so and so is now as opposed to the circumstances they may have had to overcome to get where they are at.  I am currently in the "Toolbox" section and I really liked how he set up his point about how a writer should best equip themselves to write by relating the story of his grandfather's toolbox from his childhood.  I think King's wit is one of his best qualities.  

To finish up,  I really liked getting the opportunity to see how King developed into a writer, but I am also anxious to see what his other tips for perfecting the craft will be.  I also felt that the ending to the "C.V." section was a bit speedy, he had been talking about his life in a chronological way, going along smoothly, but then he makes a 10 year jump into the future, talks about his substance abuse, and abruptly ends that section.  It is interesting because I have felt in the past that one of my qualms with his fiction is that it often ends too abruptly; he is a wonderful storyteller and has a great ability to draw you in with his long and complicated tales but then it is almost as if he has to rush to finish up before whatever he is going on about becomes too lengthy.  I am interested in seeing how he wraps the entire book up.

"On Writing" Response

Stephen King On Writing Response
As a fan of King’s fiction, I have found this book most interesting in its autobiographical aspects. Clearly his goal in writing this is to provide readers with incite into his experience as a professional writer but reading about his real-life circumstances that led to the creation of novels like The Shining and Carrie is particularly fascinating. I also appreciated King’s ability to write about his substance abuse. This seemed to be a moment of role reversal; rather than his life influencing the creation of his characters, one of his characters, the nurse from Misery, altered the way he though about his life and his craft. It is similar to the realization he makes, albeit delayed by a decade, that he is an alcoholic just like Jack in The Shining. However, Jack’s character merely seems to be an impetus for that realization, while Annie provided motivation to stop indulging his destructive tendencies.
Another interesting portion of this book revolves around King’s view of writing as a form of telepathy. It makes sense the way King phrases it but I had never though of writing in this sense. Telepathy, however, may not be the most appropriate word for what King is trying to explain. I find it more analogous to a time capsule or the etchings on gold plates NASA had launched into space. The information and images contained within are able to travel across time and space, and do indeed conjure images in the reader similar to those experienced by the writer. The only reason I say that telepathy may be an inappropriate phrase for this type of interaction is that it is always one-sided.