Amazon.com Review
Short and snappy as it is, Stephen Kings 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. Youre right there with the young author as hes tormented by poison ivy, gas-passing babysitters, uptight schoolmarms, and a laundry job nastier than Jack Londons. Its 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 wifes intervention, which he describes). "Theres 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 writers "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. Lovecrafts arcane vocabulary, Hemingways leanness, Grishams authenticity, Richard Doolings artful obscenity, Jonathan Kellermans sentence fragments. He explains why Harts War is a great story marred by a tin ear for dialogue, and how Elmore Leonards Be Cool could be the antidote.
King isnt just a writer, hes a true teacher. --Tim Appelo
"Long live the King" hailed Entertainment Weekly upon the publication of Stephen Kings On Writing. Part memoir, part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writers craft, comprising the basic tools of the trade every writer must have. Kings advice is grounded in his vivid memories from childhood through his emergence as a writer, from his struggling early career to his widely reported near-fatal accident in 1999 -- and how the inextricable link between writing and living spurred his recovery. Brilliantly structured, friendly and inspiring, On Writing will empower and entertain everyone who reads it -- fans, writers, and anyone who loves a great story well told.
Rate Points :4.5
Binding :Mass Market Paperback
Label :Pocket
Manufacturer :Pocket
ProductGroup :Book
Studio :Pocket
Publisher :Pocket
EAN :9780743455961
Price :$7.99USD
Lowest Price :$3.85USD
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