<![CDATA[On Writing]]>

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Short and snappy as it is, Stephen King's On Writing really contains two books: a fondly sardonic autobiography and a tough-love lesson for aspiring novelists. The memoir is terrific stuff, a vivid description of how a writer grew out of a misbehaving kid. You're right there with the young author as he's tormented by poison ivy, gas-passing babysitters, uptight schoolmarms, and a laundry job nastier than Jack London's. It's a ripping yarn that casts a sharp light on his fiction. This was a child who dug Yvette Vickers from Attack of the Giant Leeches, not Sandra Dee. "I wanted monsters that ate whole cities, radioactive corpses that came out of the ocean and ate surfers, and girls in black bras who looked like trailer trash." But massive reading on all literary levels was a craving just as crucial, and soon King was the published author of "I Was a Teen-Age Graverobber." As a young adult raising a family in a trailer, King started a story inspired by his stint as a janitor cleaning a high-school girls locker room. He crumpled it up, but his writer wife retrieved it from the trash, and using her advice about the girl milieu and his own memories of two reviled teenage classmates who died young, he came up with Carrie. King gives us lots of revelations about his life and work. The kidnapper character in Misery, the mind-possessing monsters in The Tommyknockers, and the haunting of the blocked writer in The Shining symbolized his cocaine and booze addiction (overcome thanks to his wife's intervention, which he describes). "There's one novel, Cujo, that I barely remember writing." King also evokes his college days and his recovery from the van crash that nearly killed him, but the focus is always on what it all means to the craft. He gives you a whole writer's "tool kit": a reading list, writing assignments, a corrected story, and nuts-and-bolts advice on dollars and cents, plot and character, the basic building block of the paragraph, and literary models. He shows what you can learn from H.P. Lovecraft's arcane vocabulary, Hemingway's leanness, Grisham's authenticity, Richard Dooling's artful obscenity, Jonathan Kellerman's sentence fragments. He explains why Hart's War is a great story marred by a tin ear for dialogue, and how Elmore Leonard's Be Cool could be the antidote. King isn't just a writer, he's a true teacher. --Tim Appelo

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5 11 false false Sat Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Mon Dec 17 06:17:13 -0800 2007 Mon Dec 17 06:17:37 -0800 2007 more...]]> 4 4 false false Thu Jul 24 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Thu Jul 17 05:43:43 -0700 2008 Thu Jul 24 08:21:48 -0700 2008
I was most caught up in his stories recalling his early days as a writer (as a child up until he sold the paperback rights to Carrie). I also enjoyed h...more...]]> 5 5 false false Thu Jan 10 12:24:03 -0800 2008 Thu Mar 27 17:39:22 -0700 2008 In the first half of the book he talks about growing up and how he got into writing while the se...more...]]> 4 3 false false Thu Feb 05 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Thu Jan 08 09:45:23 -0800 2009 Thu Feb 05 02:12:06 -0800 2009 more...]]> 5 5 false false Wed Jul 04 14:44:17 -0700 2007 Sun Sep 21 10:49:47 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 4 false false Sun Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Thu Apr 26 16:53:16 -0700 2007 Tue May 01 02:14:34 -0700 2007 more...]]> 3 2 false false Mon Dec 22 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Tue Dec 16 04:54:18 -0800 2008 Mon Dec 22 01:57:57 -0800 2008
He came across as a pretentious sod and honestly, I'm put off by his tone and how he ... well, he really sounded condescending in many parts of this. I hesitate at saying ...more...]]> 5 2 false false Wed Oct 31 08:07:32 -0700 2007 Thu Nov 01 09:52:14 -0700 2007 more...]]> 3 2 false false Tue Jul 03 05:02:35 -0700 2007 Tue Jul 03 05:15:58 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 2 false false Tue May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Mon May 21 12:32:47 -0700 2007 Thu May 24 19:04:54 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 8 false false Wed Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2003 Sun Nov 16 17:27:32 -0800 2008 Thu May 28 19:11:38 -0700 2009
King divides this book into three parts. The first explains how he came to be the writer he is today. The second deals specifically with writing. The final part is about the accident he had in 1999. T...more...]]> 4 1 false false Sat Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sun Nov 30 07:34:04 -0800 2008 Mon Dec 01 18:10:40 -0800 2008 1 more...]]> 4 1 false false Mon Jan 26 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Thu Jan 22 07:50:28 -0800 2009 Mon Jan 26 20:56:37 -0800 2009 1 more...]]> 5 2 false false Tue May 05 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 22 12:00:16 -0700 2009 Wed May 06 17:42:09 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 1 false true Wed Jan 28 10:10:50 -0800 2009 Wed Jan 28 10:10:50 -0800 2009 more...]]> 5 2 false false Wed Nov 26 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Thu Nov 13 12:17:36 -0800 2008 Wed Nov 26 12:51:53 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 1 false false Fri Jan 09 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Fri Jan 02 08:44:47 -0800 2009 Fri Jan 09 13:24:07 -0800 2009
"On Writing" is not your ordinary, boring, english how-to manual. It is a book written by a successful author (who started off as an unknown himself), who gives the reader tips on writing a good s...more...]]> 0 1 false false Fri Apr 03 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Oct 10 22:23:42 -0700 2008 Sat May 16 18:23:13 -0700 2009
April 2 update:
Guilt finally moved this to currently reading.
Enjoyed his life story. Liked Bill Bryson's better.
He reveres The Elements of ...more...]]> 4 1 false false Thu Aug 07 19:31:08 -0700 2008 Sat Sep 20 22:31:30 -0700 2008 -Editors are always right.
-Buy the Elements of Style. Check!
-King's wife is a feminist. Her name is Tabitha.
-King likes the Ramones:)
-King's a democrat that worked at the libr...more...]]> 4 1 false false Tue Sep 16 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Wed Jul 23 15:15:55 -0700 2008 Wed Sep 17 21:03:01 -0700 2008 Stephen King's Dark Tower series (I'm currently reading the final entry) I decided to take a quick breather from the bigger picture and focus on some of the details. I was particularly interested in the accident that almost killed him and subsequently infor...more...]]>