#ON WRITING A MEMOIR OF THE CRAFT HOW TO#

Write the first draft with the door closed. until much later.ДЇinally, on the topic of revising the work-how much and how many drafts? вЂњTwo drafts and a polishвЂќ is whatвЂ™s worked best for Mr. You may need everything from a shovel to a toothbrush, but let the fossil emerge from the ground - you wonвЂ™t know if itвЂ™s a small fish or a T. Start with your characters and see where they take you. Writing fiction is like unearthing a fossil. To do less is to rob your work (and eventually your readers) of the vision that makes each tale you write uniquely your own. But once your basic story is on paper, you need to think about what it means and enrich your following drafts with your conclusions. Good fiction always begins with story and progresses to theme it almost never begins with theme and progresses to story. Writing and literature classes can be annoyingly preoccupied by (and pretentious about) theme, approaching it as the most sacred of sacred cows, but (donвЂ™t be shocked) itвЂ™s really no big deal. вЂњThere are a lot of bells and whistles that you can learn in a standard writing course -onomatopoeia, incremental repetition, stream of consciousness, interior dialogue, changes of verbal tense, the sticky question of back story (how do you get it in and how much of it belongs), theme, pacing, and a dozen other topics - but remember, first and foremost, good fiction writing is about the story. вЂњWhat do you write about? Write about anything you damn well want, as long as you tell the truth.The job boils down to two things: paying attention to how the real people around you behave and then telling the truth about what you see.вЂќ Finally, to write well, you will have to read a lot. Good writing is often about letting go of fear and affectation. If you canвЂ™t or wonвЂ™t, itвЂ™s time for you to close the book and do something else. If you can take it seriously, we can do business.

Putting minutiae aside, hereвЂ™s the basic premise: you must not come lightly to the blank page.Д«ut itвЂ™s writing, damn it, not washing the car or putting on eyeliner. You may have heard the commandments before - no adverbs, no passive voice, in fact, just no unnecessary words at all.

#ON WRITING A MEMOIR OF THE CRAFT HOW TO#

The second, more meatier part of the book talks about how to write well. In the spring and summer of 1986 I wrote The Tommyknockers, often working until midnight with my heart running at a hundred and thirty beats a minute and cotton swabs stuck up my nose to stem the coke-induced bleeding.ДЄt the end of my adventures I was drinking a case of sixteen-ounce tallboys a night, and thereвЂ™s one novel, Cujo, that I barely remember writing at all. вЂ¦and telling an alcoholic to control his drinking is like telling a guy suffering the worldвЂ™s most cataclysmic case of diarrhea to control his shitting. He also recounts his struggle with alcoholism and drug abuse, with some memorable passages like these: вЂњThe paperback rights to Carrie went to Signet Books for four hundred thousand dollars.вЂќДЄnd every word in between is worth reading to understand what goes into making of a writer. That was the first buck I made in this business.вЂќ He talks about the general state of poverty and helpness that he went through not just as a child raised by a single mother, but also later as a writer with a laundromat job to pay the bills.

On Writing opens with a little autobiography that charts the path his life took that made him the writer he is today. He is a fiction author with more than 50 bestselling books to his name.

Stephen King is a magician with a pen for a wand.

On writing a memoir of the craft