I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs and I will shout it from the rooftops. To put it another way, they’re like dandelions. If you have one on your lawn it’s pretty and unique. If you fail to root it out, however, you find five the next day . . . fifty the day after that . . . and then, my brothers and sisters, your lawn is totally, completely, and profligately covered with dandelions. By then you see them for the weeds they are, but by then it’s—GASP!!--too late.
If you want to be a writer, then you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.
You must be prepared to do some serious turning inward toward the life of the imagination, and that means, I’m afraid, that Geraldo, Keith Obermann, and Jay Leno must go. Reading takes time, and the glass teat takes too much of it.
Must you write complete sentences each time, every time? Perish the thought.
It’s always easier to kill someone else’s darlings than it is to kill your own.
Reading that PDF now, currently around page 140. So far I’m not very impressed. First he spends a hundred pages talking about his life, saying pretty much nothing useful about writing as far as I can tell. (Though I skipped most of it.) When he does finally get to the point, the advice-to-words ratio is quite low. The advice itself is fine, but so far only fine—not great or saying much that couldn’t be found anywhere. Even if I’m charitable and disregard the first 100 pages, King says less in 40 pages than Stein does in five.
I think it’s fair to say that Stephen King is engaging, but not efficient.
Most of what intrigued me about the book was getting a feeling for what it’s like to be outside the academic/SWPL/liberal elite culture I’m used to. King’s fiction was a bit of a surprise to me because there was no contempt for people who use ordinary brand name products. [1] In On Writing, there’s a bit about him resisting the idea of theme in fiction—he had gotten the impression it was something arbitrarily added on, and then he realized that it was actually a way of emphasizing patterns which appeared spontaneously in early drafts.
[1] I use brand name products, but I have a background sense that the more obscure they are, the better.
Because people here recommended it and I figured he might just take a while to get to the good stuff. It was also entertainingly written and pleasant to read even if it didn’t offer much of value. There were plenty of funny lines that I copy-pasted for others to enjoy.
I ended up reading it to the end due to the entertainment factor. There was some unique stuff—the open and closed door thing was interesting and possibly useful, though it won’t work for everyone. I also imagine the encouragement about agents and not needing to be an industry insider to get published is great for someone looking to get published the ordinary way, though with the upcoming demise of traditional publishing, that is becoming less relevant.
Overall verdict—can be worth reading if one is mostly looking for pleasant reading about writing, or something to motivate one to write, with the occasional piece of good advice thrown in. But I’d recommend people mainly looking for lots of advice on writing to look elsewhere.
Stephen King, On Writing
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The single best piece of advice he gives is to get a room with a door, one that locks. It’s made a huge difference in my writing.
Reading that PDF now, currently around page 140. So far I’m not very impressed. First he spends a hundred pages talking about his life, saying pretty much nothing useful about writing as far as I can tell. (Though I skipped most of it.) When he does finally get to the point, the advice-to-words ratio is quite low. The advice itself is fine, but so far only fine—not great or saying much that couldn’t be found anywhere. Even if I’m charitable and disregard the first 100 pages, King says less in 40 pages than Stein does in five.
I think it’s fair to say that Stephen King is engaging, but not efficient.
Most of what intrigued me about the book was getting a feeling for what it’s like to be outside the academic/SWPL/liberal elite culture I’m used to. King’s fiction was a bit of a surprise to me because there was no contempt for people who use ordinary brand name products. [1] In On Writing, there’s a bit about him resisting the idea of theme in fiction—he had gotten the impression it was something arbitrarily added on, and then he realized that it was actually a way of emphasizing patterns which appeared spontaneously in early drafts.
[1] I use brand name products, but I have a background sense that the more obscure they are, the better.
.
Because people here recommended it and I figured he might just take a while to get to the good stuff. It was also entertainingly written and pleasant to read even if it didn’t offer much of value. There were plenty of funny lines that I copy-pasted for others to enjoy.
I ended up reading it to the end due to the entertainment factor. There was some unique stuff—the open and closed door thing was interesting and possibly useful, though it won’t work for everyone. I also imagine the encouragement about agents and not needing to be an industry insider to get published is great for someone looking to get published the ordinary way, though with the upcoming demise of traditional publishing, that is becoming less relevant.
Overall verdict—can be worth reading if one is mostly looking for pleasant reading about writing, or something to motivate one to write, with the occasional piece of good advice thrown in. But I’d recommend people mainly looking for lots of advice on writing to look elsewhere.