ON WRITING by Stephen King

King's seminal book on writing and his life.

I have been planning to read this memoir-come-how-to-write book by Stephen King for several months, but was delayed by (a) travelling to Canada and (b) all the great fiction books I have backed up in my “TBR” (to be read) pile. However, the book arrived at my local library after I placed a reserve on it and I collected it late last week, eager to see if King could offer up anything to this amateur new.

My only hesitation going into this was that I am not a fan of Stephen King’s novels. Horror and science fiction stuff is not my thing. Notwithstanding that, some ofhis short stories, like Stand By Me, The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption are brilliant - so I believed there would be something to offer.

Besides, I often enjoy King’s commentary on Twitter and suspected I’d get a few laughs in his memoir, and he didn’t disappoint.

The book is split into three sections: the first, CV, is essentially a shortened memoir, telling the key stories of his youth and early writing life, including his descent into alcohol and drug addiction.

The second section is called “On Writing” and it is where King talks about the art and craft of writing What I liked about this section was the no BS approach - he tells us how he writes, accepts that many others have different approaches to the craft - some successful and some not - then gives you permission to go and just do it.

The third section was written after the 1999 accident that saw him hit by a van while walking in Maine, an accident which left him with significant injuries and which King was lucky to survive. This section is short, but tells the story with the necessary sense of fear he had, without overdramatising what was a dramatic enough situation. He also doesn’t seem to have strong feelings against the driver of the van that hit him, a man with a significant and poor driving record.

King’s writing is very American, but that isn’t a criticism; simply put, he is a product of his life and he writes accordingly. There were some minor details which I was confused by. King clearly doesn’t suffer fools and doesn’t seem particularly impressed by flowery, overly descriptive use of language, and yet there are several times when he uses terms which I didn’t know (and I am not an idiot - I am well read, well educated and love sophisticated language use) - which I felt ran counter to his overall message decrying snobbery in fiction writing. However, this would be the only critical observation I’d make - overall, I really liked this book and have found it far more readable and useful than some of the other books on the topic of writing.

I plan on buying a copy of this at some stage so I can refer back to it from time to time, and thoroughly enjoyed my few days with Mr King.