Secret Windows: Essays and Fiction on the Craft of Writing

by Stephen King, Peter Straub (Introduction)

One day, while in his laundry room, Stephen King squeezed behind his dryer, looked out of a window, and realized that he was seeing a garden that he'd never noticed before. This is what great writers do, he thought. They look out of an almost forgotten window at an angle that renders the common extraordinary.

Secret Windows: Essays and Fiction on the Craft of Writing is an exclusive Book-of-the-Month Club anthology of hard-to-find non-fiction pieces, little-known interviews, short stories, and articles about writing for those looking for direction on how to find their own "windows" - or for anyone wishing to be touched by Stephen King's humor and wisdom.
Included in this collection are unpublished early fiction (very early; King was twelve when he wrote "Jumper" and "Rush Call"); a pre-Carrie article with tips for selling stories to men's magazines ("The Horror Writer and the Ten Bears: A True Story"); advice to his son on writing (with the look-twice title "Great Hookers I Have Known"); recommendations to teen readers in a Seventeen article ("What Stephen King Does for Love"); a long chapter from his wonderful treatise on the horror genre ("Horror Fiction" from Danse Macabre); and even a first-time-in-print short story, "In the Deathroom" (just for fun).
Intended as a companion to Stephen King's 2000 book On Writing, Secret Windows: Essays and Fiction on the Craft of Writing captures the author's mind in action-spontaneous, subversive, quirky, yet morally and ethically serious. Together, they comprise virtually the sum of the thoughts on writing of the dominant force in American fiction for the past three decades.

-CONTENTS-
• Introduction by Peter Straub
• Dave's Rag: Jumper, Rush Call
• The Horror Market Writer and the Ten Bears: A True Story
• Foreword to Night Shift
• On Becoming a Brand Name
• "Horror Fiction" from Danse Macabre
• An Evening at the Billerica Library
• The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet
• How It Happened
• Banned Books and Other Concerns
• Turning the Thumbscrews on the Reader
• "Ever Et Raw Meat?" and Other Weird Questions
• A New Introduction to John Fowles's The Collector
• What Stephen King Does for Love
• Two Past Midnight: A Note on "Secret Window, Secret Garden"
• Introduction to Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door
• Great Hookers I Have Known
• A Night at the Royal Festival Hall: An Interview by Muriel Gray
• An Evening with Stephen King: March 30, 1999
• In the Deathroom

Genres: Nonfiction, Writing, Horror, Essays, Short Stories, Biography, Anthologies

433 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Stephen Edwin King was born the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. After his father left them when Stephen was two, he and his older brother, David, were raised by his mother. Parts of his childhood were spent in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where his father's family was at the time, and in Stratford, Connecticut. When Stephen was eleven, his mother brought her children back to Durham, Maine, for good. Her parents, Guy and Nellie Pillsbury, had become incapacitated with old age, and Ruth King was persuaded by her sisters to take over the physical care of them. Other family members provided a small house in Durham and financial support. After Stephen's grandparents passed away, Mrs. King found work in the kitchens of Pineland, a nearby residential facility for the mentally challenged.

Stephen attended the grammar school in Durham and Lisbon Falls High School, graduating in 1966. From his sophomore year at the University of Maine at Orono, he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper, THE MAINE CAMPUS. He was also active in student politics, serving as a member of the Student Senate. He came to support the anti-war movement on the Orono campus, arriving at his stance from a conservative view that the war in Vietnam was unconstitutional. He graduated in 1970, with a B.A. in English and qualified to teach on the high school level. A draft board examination immediately post-graduation found him 4-F on grounds of high blood pressure, limited vision, flat feet, and punctured eardrums.

He met Tabitha Spruce in the stacks of the Fogler Library at the University, where they both worked as students; they married in January of 1971. As Stephen was unable to find placement as a teacher immediately, the Kings lived on his earnings as a laborer at an industrial laundry, and her student loan and savings, with an occasional boost from a short story sale to men's magazines.

Stephen made his first professional short story sale ("The Glass Floor") to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. Throughout the early years of his marriage, he continued to sell stories to men's magazines. Many were gathered into the Night Shift collection or appeared in other anthologies.

In the fall of 1971, Stephen began teaching English at Hampden Academy, the public high school in Hampden, Maine. Writing in the evenings and on the weekends, he continued to produce short stories and to work on novels.

Reviews

[مریم · Rating 3 out of 5]

قاعدتا با این حجم از تنبلی "فارسیشو" "گوش" دادم
پس نظری نمیتونم درمورد بخش دوم کتاب که نقدشه بدم، و حتی نثر اصلی و ظرافتهای نگارشی کتاب
بنظرم داستان قابل پیش‌بینی و کسل‌کننده ای بود، میشد بهتر باشه واقعا جا داشت، ولی الکی کشش داده بود، مخصوصا بعد ازینکه پلات توییستش باز می‌شد یک دنیا کسشر بهم بسته بود که باید قبلش بهم می‌بست، شاید فکر میکرد مخاطب گاوه و یا براش این سبک داستان ها جدیده پس توصیفات مربوط به چند شخصیتی بودنو حالتای روانی طرفو گذاشته بود اون آخر
به شخصه کتابی که داستان پر وصف و توصیفی داره رو دوست دارم ولی اینجا اون اخرا رسما گوش نمیدادم و اهمیتی هم نداشت
برام دو ونیم باشه در بهترین حالت چون پتانسل فیلم خوب شدنو با کلی تغییرات داره ولی کتاب خوب نه