On Writing by Stephen King
Before I start talking about things actually relevant to the title of this post, let me designate a little prelude to let you in on some updates of my life.
So.
Yes. I am alive. I had, once again, fallen off the face of cyberspace and left all of you hanging there, wondering whether I was lost in the woods or floating around in a vacuum of nothingness. I apologize. But nevertheless, here I am, healthy and well and significantly less awake than I was the last time I posted on here!
I'm a bit preoccupied with my school schedules, as well as me studying for a certain subject test for a certain area of science that has a certain relation to living things and how they work, which is also consuming most of my time. More like, it's devouring most of my time. Also I've done this somewhat stupid thing called 'joining the cross country team,' which evidently leads to much tiredness, leg-soreness, and a lot less time. (But I actually kind of like it, so it's not that bad.)
(I am 36.7% sure you didn't understand that previous paragraph.)
But I know, it's no excuse to not-post-every-week, which is, after all, what this year's resolution was. I will try. I even have a notification on my phone set weekly for every Saturday at 4:00 PM. (Obviously I guiltily turn it off every week.)
...but on the bright side, I've read some books over the summer, and I'm reading an awesome book right now, and... well... nothing too bright, actually. Yeah. ...A lot less time apparently means less time for reading and writing. And I know, it's bad. Because I really, really want to learn to write well, like those virtuosos who make words fluid and dance and make you cry and all that awesome jazz. But according to Stephen King, whose words are sad but very true, "If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write."
So now, after reading On Writing by Stephen King, I am depressed every time I think of the fact that I don't have time to read. And honestly, it's not so much that I don't have time. Because I have time when I'm in the bathroom (which I know it's weird to say, but am I really the only one who reads in the bathroom?), on the bus, waiting in the doctor's office, waiting in general, and other in-between places like that. But more and more I find myself leaning more towards the digital than the analog, which makes me sad. And honestly I'm not as bad as some people who claim to not have read a book on their own since fifth grade (which I honestly don't understand how that even works) (and yes, somebody actually said this), but I still tell myself to read and not Internet (yes, I have used Internet as a verb, excuse my grammar). I still do read in the in-between places and other boring things, but I can sort of feel myself getting bored sometimes. And it's bad. I still love books, but now it's in between going on the Internet and reading a book.
(That was a terribly constructed paragraph. Oh, well.)
Okay. Let me pull the leash a bit so I don't stray too far off into the woods. So.
On Writing.
By Stephen King.
I've already introduced y'all to a quote of his, which if I were to waste post-space and restate it, would be "If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write."
This book, I warn you all, is non-fiction. It is, entirely, and purely, non-fiction. But let me tell you another thing. It is, honest-to-God, non-fiction in disguise. It's as fiction (and by fiction I mean the tone of it) as Richard Peck and as entertaining as Harry Potter.
(Okay, maybe the Harry Potter thing was a bit of an inflation.)
On Writing is, as the title so succinctly states, about writing. It's about King's progression towards becoming a writer and about what he thinks each writer should know about writing. And putting this boring sentence aside, it is written in such a way that you forget you're reading non-fiction and you feel like you're reading a story. A story about Stephen King, only not Stephen King as some non-fictional author who wrote an autobiography for self-promotion, but as a Stephen King character who goes through hardships, funny moments, epiphanies, and life-changing events.
So yes, it's a good book. I'd recommend it to anybody who likes writing or wants to know how to write. Honestly, for anybody who likes reading.
Scratch that.
Just read it.
The book is divided into, to generalize, two parts. One is his autobiography. And trust me, it's not the sort where they talk about In 1940, he won the Nobel Literary Prize with his co-author Daniel Bob. In 1951, he sold one million copies of his book Hello. His wife and children then moved to Connecticut and has since lived there up to today. and other boring series-of-events. (By the way, none of that is true. I made it up on the spot.)
Rather, his autobiography is multiple snippets of his life that describe moments that affected his writing career in one way or another. The book starts out with him as a child imagining himself in a colorful circus scene in his aunt's garage and ending up injuring himself. Then the next snippet jumps to, for example, his babysitter, who exhibited really strange behavior (you're going to have to read to find out, heh). It follows him through his life as he gets into trouble in his high school (that part was pretty funny), as he graduates and struggles to find a living, as he works in a laundry-place to scrape some coins by to feed himself and his wife, as he struggles with drugs and alcohol, as he somehow manages to write with the encouragement of his wife, as he persists in his determination to get published onto a writer's magazine... and on and on. It's honestly really inspiring and not the least bit boring. I know it sounds bad. But honestly.
The second part is Stephen King directing us as readers (and writers) what to do and what not to even think about when writing. He talks about adverbs and the passive voice, about sentence structure and flow, and other important things in writing. This part is what might be boring for some, but for me, it was really helpful. So if you like writing, or you want to improve in writing, or you are interested in the art of writing, or whatever it is with writing that you have an interest, you should definitely try reading this book. He gives a lot of helpful tips. And it's not boring. I mean, I read it in two days. Which is practically record time, considering I read it after school started. (While it took me practically two weeks to read The Book Thief, for some really strange reason.)
(Heh. I read it so fast partly because it was a summer reading book due in two days. Long story. Basically, I already had two summer reading books read for school, but one of the books was on hold in the library on the day I had to bring it in, so I couldn't bring it to school for the summer-essay we had to write. I ended up kind of just speed-reading On Writing that weekend since I had that lying around in my house. Though now I'm glad that I did.)
(Hopefully that paragraph made sense.)
Reading On Writing sort of got me thinking. It made me think about success in general, as well as writing success. I think it's the experiences that you've had that contribute to the pool of thought in your brain, which will eventually make its way onto paper and find its way to success, whatever it is the word means to you. When you think about it, people who succeed (and not everybody) tend to have a dark history some time in their past. And by dark, I don't mean jail-time or anything like that. I mean, a death. Or financial hardships. Or an illness. Something that was life changing and kind of stopped you in your tracks, shook you by your shoulders, and screamed into your face. Something that changed the way you think, the way you life, the way you take things for granted.
I mean, honestly, it's up to you, as a reader, to agree or disagree with this. And it's also your definition of success and a person-of-success that it depends on. Whether your idea of success coincides with mine is something nobody shall know. But either way, On Writing got me thinking. It sort of inspired me, as well.
If you've read the book--and even if you haven't--Stephen King mentions some hardships he had with financial issues, with drugs and alcohol. It's not like he wanted to do it because he thought he'd look "cool." It was something he turned to because he felt like his life was so messed up and so doomed, because he was devastated in his failures and the deaths around him. (I believe it was just his mother, actually.) But he dragged himself on and continued to write, continued to pursue his passion. And it sounds weird, but as I sort of followed him through his writing as he traced his life again, I felt pity for him when he was hungover, sorrow for him when his wife told him he'd have to get back up unless he wanted her to move away with his children, and I felt this utter joy and pride when I read his breakthrough as he suddenly got an offer of a few ten thousand dollars. It tells me that all success is something we can't take for granted, even though they might be living in a mansion today. It sort of told me that yes, I can choose to become discouraged when I see someone so high up in success, but I can also think of what they did to get there, that everybody has a past that isn't as bright as the today, and that any dark present I may be in can lead up to successful future if I bring myself together and pull myself forward.
So yes. That's what I got from On Writing. After reading it, I had all this built up energy and excitement from reading about writing. I was nearly leaping out of the bed to start writing after I closed the book. Heh.
That's about it.
But you know what? Regarding three paragraphs ago (I don't know if those past two are even paragraphs) when I constructed quite a few potential run-on sentences to describe the inspiration I got from the book, I am currently reading a book that somewhat contradicts the "if-we-work-hard-we'll-get-to-success" idea. It's called Outliers by Malcom Gladwell. I've read another book of his, called Blink, and I've heard from my friend that The Tipping Point is also a good book, as well (also written by him). Outliers is a super-interesting (also non-fiction) book analyzing the success of people from different areas. Gladwell talks about how success might not just be hard work and grit, but also a significant amount of luck and perhaps a formula that these high-end people have in common. It's so intriguing. I'm serious. It's awesome. And you'd think the hockey players got there because they were better at hockey.
(You'll only get that if you've read the book.)
So yeah.
That's about it for today.
Toodles.
P.S. I forgot to note this, but recently I've fallen in love with metaphors and similes. Not the flowy old-fashioned Victorian style, but sharp and sarcastic metaphors and similes that Zusak and King use so well in their writing. Seriously. I need to frame their metaphors on my bedroom wall or something. They're so creatively colorful. I want that.