Type of bind: Hardcover
Format: Bargain Price
Label: Scribner
Manufacturer: Scribner
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 288
Printing Date: October 03, 2000
Publishing house: Scribner
Release Date: October 03, 2000
Sale Popularity Level: 221196
Studio: Scribner
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Brief Book Summary:
'If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.'
Here is Stephen King's master class on his craft.
On Writing begins with a mesmerizing account of King's childhood and his early focus on writing to tell a story. A series of vivid memories from adolescence, college, and the struggling years that led up to his very first novel, Carrie, offer a fresh and often funny perspective on the formation of a writer.
King then turns to the tools of his trade, examining crucial aspects of the wriiter's art and life, offering practical and inspiring advice on everything from plot and character development to work habits and rejection.
King was in the middle of writing this book when he was nearly killed in a widely reported accident. On Writing culminates with a profoundly moving account of how his need to write spurred him toward recovery, and brought him back to his life.
Amazon.com:
Short and snappy as it is, Stephen King's 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. You're right there with the young author as he's tormented by poison ivy, gas-passing babysitters, uptight schoolmarms, and a laundry job nastier than Jack London's. It's 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 grey 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 wife's intervention, which he describes). 'There's 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 writer's '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. Lovecraft's arcane vocabulary, Hemingway's leanness, Grisham's authenticity, Richard Dooling's artful obscenity, Jonathan Kellerman's sentence fragments. He explains why Hart's War is a great story marred by a tin ear for dialogue, and how Elmore Leonard's Be Cool could be the antidote.
King isn't just a writer, he's a true teacher. --Tim Appelo
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
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I thought that it was cool he did this. It was a quick read, and it wasn't Earth shattering, but I thought it was insightful. Quirky guy.
Rated by buyers -
An easy read. Though I skimmed much of the 1st 1/2 which is mainly memoir and a bit dull at times. Though I thoroughly enjoyed reading about King's alcohol and drug problems.
In the 2nd 1/2 King talks about writing and publishing. He explains how he works (he doesn't believe in days off) and how one might go about getting published. The actual writing advice itself is not new--leave out adverbs--don't say in 3 words what you can say with 1, etc.
I think it's a great book for a beginning writer to start with.
Rated by buyers 
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Mr. King's story of his development into a noted and successful writer and his description of the writing craft is only one man's story, but a unique and inspiring one. Think of it as the very first half of his autobiography - may he live long and well! Also, think of it as his tutorial and elucidation on how to write something worth reading. Two tales in one unique book.
King's early life was tumultuous; the reader begins to see how the writer of rather unusual stories was formed. After learning about his extended starving artist time, the reader easily celebrates his well-earned sucess and acclaim. His recovery from the near-fatal attack by a minivan illustrates real grit, and the extremely positive influence of his wife on his life it wonderful. King is almost as interesting a character as he the many he give us in his best books.
The greatest value of the book, however, at least to writers and wanna-be's, is in his candid explanations on how to compose, edit, re-compose, edit, edit again, re-write, proofread, and cut until the manuscript shines. Even for a master and journeyman like Mr. King, writing top-notch fiction requires focus, sweat, and time. It's tiring. I imagine if he could work more than four concentrated hours a day he would. While his description of the author's daily life is not glamorous, it nonetheless is realistic, and illustrates how a true writer can never be satisfied NOT writing.
Whether or not you usually read Mr. King's variety of fiction, if you even dabble a small amount as a writer you can benefit tremendously from what he has included in this wonderful volume.
Rated by buyers -
Until I read On Writing by Stephen King, I had never read any of his books. To be honest, since On Writing, I've only read one other of his books which I didn't like so we've come to an impasse.... however On Writing is one of the best books I've read. The very first half is a memoir of his life where we learn how his early jobs and experiences inspired the ideas for his best sellers. Every thing King sees becomes an obvious cue for him to think "what if". He is a prolific writer and I admire his constant discipline at sitting down and typing his heart out. He finishes a novel and then writes a novella followed by a short story and then he's back to a new novel. The man has ideas a plenty simply by always asking himself "what if" and then writing it down.
The second half of the book is a lesson on how to write. King has much authority on the subject not only due to his global sucess but also because he was an English teacher before the phenomenal sucess of Carrie back in the 70s. He teaches how to pair nouns with verbs so we can make sentences that come alive; for example, Rocks explode, which immediately takes the reader to a place where they can envisage rocks exploding... it's all about showing the story rather than telling the reader a bunch of words.
Stephen King is a master writer and teacher. A great book which even a non-writer will enjoy because King shows the reader, his Constant Reader, just how much fun you can have.
Rated by buyers 
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The postal service lost the product and so we never received it, but amazon quickly refunded the money.
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