On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

by Stephen King

it’s writing, damn it, not washing the car or putting on eyeliner. If you can take it seriously, we can do business. If you can’t or won’t, it’s time for you to close the book and do something else. Wash the car, maybe.

Some writers have enormous vocabularies; these are folks who’d know if there really is such a thing as an insalubrious dithyramb or a cozening raconteur,

I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops.

It be slippery, precious; aye, it be very slippery, indeed.

(what is so delicately exciting to the imagination as a box of fresh computer disks or a ream of blank paper?),

Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy. Some of this book—perhaps too much—has been about how I learned to do it. Much of it has been about how you can do it better. The rest of it—and perhaps the best of it—is a permission slip: you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will. Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink.

^ This.