On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

by Stephen King

Then as now, I tend to go through periods of idleness followed by periods of workaholic frenzy.

You’ll learn if you try.”

“When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story,” he said. “When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.”

why shouldn’t writers be able to go bonkers and still stay sane?

It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support-system for art. It’s the other way around.

my tablecloth is your tablecloth, knock yourself out.

Given that, why in God’s name would you want to make things worse by choosing a word which is only cousin to the one you really wanted to use?

remind yourself that rocks explode, Jane transmits, mountains float, and plums deify.

Warriner’s English Grammar and Composition

All I ask is that you do as well as you can, and remember that, while to write adverbs is human, to write he said or she said is divine.

trail of pulsing adverbs, wooden characters, and vile passive-voice constructions behind them.

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.

If God gives you something you can do, why in God’s name wouldn’t you do it?

between lecturing about what you know and using it to enrich the story. The latter is good. The former is not.

Here we go.

let the situation and that one unexpected inversion carry you along.

improve with practice, but practice will never make you perfect. Why should it? What fun would that be? And the harder you try to be clear and simple, the more you will learn about the complexity of our American dialect. It be slippery, precious; aye, it be very slippery, indeed. Practice the art, always reminding yourself that your job is to say what you see, and then to get on with your story.

never tell us a thing if you can show us, instead:

“A man’s got to know his limitations.”

Gerritsen, Tess: Gravity

Greene, Graham: A Gun for Sale (aka This Gun for Hire) Greene, Graham: Our Man in Havana

Kingsolver, Barbara: The Poisonwood Bible

Lee, Harper: To Kill a Mockingbird

Quindlen, Anna: One True Thing

Rowling, J. K.: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Rowling, J. K.: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azakaban Rowling, J. K.: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

Atwood, Margaret: Oryx and Crake

Chabon, Michael: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union

Child, Lee: The Jack Reacher novels, starting with Killing Floor

Gruen, Sara: Water for Elephants

Kidd, Sue Monk: The Secret Life of Bees

Larsson, Stieg: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Martel, Yann: Life of Pi

Picoult, Jodi: Nineteen Minutes

Robotham, Michael: Shatter

Tolstoy, Leo: War and Peace