On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

"Yes. It is a surprise to a lot of people that this book is so widely read on university campuses and so widely recommended by teachers of writing. Students love it. It’s bracing: there’s no nonsense. He says somewhere in the foreword or preface that it is a short book because most books are filled with bullshit and he is determined not to offer bullshit but to tell it like it is. It is autobiographical. It describes his struggle to emerge from his addictions – to alcohol and drugs – and he talks about how he managed to pull himself and his family out of poverty and the dead end into which he had taken them. He comes from a very disadvantaged background and through sheer hard work and determination he becomes this worldwide bestselling author. This is partly because of his idea of the creative muse. Most people think of this as some sprite or fairy that is usually feminine and flutters about your head offering inspiration. His idea of the muse is ‘a basement guy’, as he calls him, who is grumpy and turns up smoking a cigar. You have to be down in the basement every day clocking in to do your shift if you want to meet the basement guy. Stephen King has this attitude that if you are going to be a writer you need to keep going and accept that quite a lot of what you produce is going to be rubbish and then you are going to revise it and keep working at it. Yes, I do. I think he talks an awful lot of sense. There is this question which continues to be asked of people who teach creative writing, even though it has been taught in the States for over 100 years and in the UK for over 40 years. We keep being asked, ‘Can writing be taught?’ And King says it is impossible to make a competent writer out of a bad writer, and equally impossible to make a great writer out of a good one, but what is possible, with lots of hard work and dedication and timely help, is to make a good writer out of a merely competent one. And his book is partly intended to address that, to help competent writers to become good ones. It is inspirational because he had no sense of entitlement. He is not a bookish person and yet he becomes this figurehead."

"Now I’m getting into my dysfunctional family. My old man had some issues with alcohol, too. I remember once, when he was on the wagon, that he also had a momentary lapse involving mouthwash. Yes. Yes. This book is like Ron Carlson’s only three times longer. What I love about it is that King really takes you into his own process, and then leaves you these little titbits of “how to” stuff. There was one in particular I made a note of, on page 175. “Good description usually consists of a few well-chosen details that will stand for everything else. In most cases, these details will be the first ones that come to mind.” That struck me. A lot of writers pile on details. This notion, just pay attention to your own thought process. What are the first details that come to mind? Those may be the best. That’s tremendously helpful advice. It had never occurred to me before, and I’ve been writing for 30-odd years. This book is full of little things like that about how he works, just tossed off. Oh, everybody hates adverbs! Yes, all writing teachers hate adverbs. I don’t know why. What’s wrong with a little adverb every now and then? Actually, somewhere not too long ago I read a defence of adverbs. I don’t know what to think of adverbs. Why does our language have adverbs if we’re not supposed to use them? My feeling is that it gets back to writing as discovery. For instance, I’m working on a novel at the moment, as I always am, and I’ve been trying to outline it. Even though I’m trying to outline it, I know that’s a mistake. For one, if an outline gets too detailed it takes away the discovery. Two, when I start to write, if it goes well, I end up tossing the outline. Stories have plots, you have to have a vague idea of where you’re trying to get, but I think what King is getting at is that you have to be open to discovery. When I interviewed John Irving for our book, he told me that he writes the last sentence first. And then he writes towards that. I imagine that’s exactly the opposite of what Stephen King does. Maybe what King means is that if, as Ron Carlson describes, you really open yourself and let the story take over, it will plot itself. For example, the novel I’m working on is a murder mystery. From the start, you have to know the particulars of the murder, so you can work your way toward it. But along the way, even though I’m trying to get to a particular end, I’m praying for those moments when the story starts telling itself. Out of that, however chaotic and uncertain it might be, you get a plot. But the plot is the structure of the narrative. Things happen to people, you have surprises, and you have a beginning, a middle and an end. In a way it’s how King defines plot. I don’t know if I’ve addressed the issue of the fossil or not – but I think it means openness to the possibilities. I love that stuff. No! But we were always asking one another, where do you work? When do you work? What is your room like? What is your desk like? Trying to get clues… I love it when writers talk about where they write, when they write. In the book, I ask people about it, and then I tried to take pictures of them, sitting at their desks. Joyce Carol Oates, in her book, talks about where she writes, which is a big glassy, open porch. I’m sure she looks out on trees…"