Writing With the King: His, Mine & Ours

NOTE: This is the long-awaited wrapup for my unintentionally-lengthy look at Stephen King's writing book-cum-memoir "On Writing: A memoir of the Craft".   At the end of which you will find a free short story written at the prompting and in the style of Stephen King.

His, Mine and Ours 

I've spent this entire series alternating between arguing with King and praising his writing.  And honestly, I'm not sure I entirely agree with him on what writing is, where it comes from or whether or not it's something anyone can do.  I'm also split on my feelings as to whether or not there's a ceiling to our potential as writers beyond which it's impossible to improve.  King obviously feels that there is, but I'm not so sure.  I think it is possible to learn to do this and what "natural" writers are born with is an innate love for it.  Whether or not that love is the catalyst needed to go from adequate to great is a philosophical question beyond the purview of this blog or this book.

Which begs the question: "Why are you so enthusiastic about a writing book that you don't entirely agree with, written by a writer whose books you're not especially a fan of?"

Arguing with King in absentia is part of the charm of his book.  If I entirely agreed with King I probably would not have given his memoir a second reading.  I have piles of books about writing in my home library that may or may not ever get a second look, most of them written by writers I whole-heartedly love and agree with.

The three books I most often loan-out are the three with which I maintain an active dialogue.  Telling Lies for Fun & Profit and Bird By Bird spend more time being loaned out than they do on my shelf and I can wholeheartedly endorse both of them for writers seeking guidance... but that doesn't mean I rubberstamp the opinions of Mr. Block of Ms. Lamott any more than I can with Mr. King.  Though I admit to arguing much more with King, but it's a friendly sort of one-sided tussle for my part.

On Writing challenged a lot of the closely-held assumptions I'd made about writing, among them the idea that I didn't need and didn't have time for writing prompts.

When King first published this book of writing advice and memories, it included a challenge to his readers.  He posed a writing problem and asked us to send him our results.

Now, when a major author asks to see something you've written, if you have any literary aspirations at all you don't hesitate.  You send them your writing sample.  Most writers refuse - on advice of counsel - to read unpublished and unagented works as an act of self-protection against future lawsuits of the "You stole my idea..." variety.  Lawsuits still happen, as JK Rowling can tell you, but I'm sure they're much less frequent because of this policy.

Because he'd never accepted writing samples from un-agented writers before, I think this was a bit of an eye-opener for Mr. King.  According to a post on his website shortly after the book came out, the request resulted in an avalanche of stories from the writers and fans eager to garner that kind of attention.  I'm as sure that many of them had dreams of landing a book deal as I am that none of them did... at least not from Mr, King's recomendation based on these writing samples.

In subsequent printings of the book, this request was removed and a notice on his website notes that submissions are closed.

All the same, it's a good 'story problem'  and one of the few I've seen that actually inspired me to sit down and put hands on keys.  I'm notoriously averse to someone giving me something to write about beyond the most general guidelines.  "Write about math" is a good prompt for me.  "Write a story about characters in this specific situation, hitting the following specific points..." is significantly less likely to get a response from my creative faculty.

Have I mentioned yet how much I hated writing for school?

Suffice to say that I like to write my own ideas and if I didn't I probably would still be a journalist.  I have enough ideas and writing prompts of my own to last me a lifetime and any time spent writing someone else's ideas feels like fingernails on the chalkboard.  No matter who the idea came from, I feel caged by these things and the urge to wander off their map is overwhelming.

For some reason King's story didn't do that to me.  For one thing, I don't usually write horror, so I was stepping into unknown territory and knowing that Stephen King had drawn the map in my quavering mitts was oddly comforting.  For another, it wasn't a ghost story it was a story of love gone awry and the chain of events leading to confrontation.

Of course I wandered off the path anyway, but I did so knowing what direction the path lay when I wanted to get back to it.  Dick & Jane are in a bad marriage.  Spousal abuse compounded by all the bad add-ons a horror writer of King's caliber can dream up.  But the roles are reversed and Jane is the abuser and Dick the abused.  Events lead to separation and, eventually, Jane's arrest.  One day, Dick drops their child off at a friend's and comes home to find Jane waiting for him...  chaos ensues.

And for whatever reasons, my fingers flew across the keyboard.  On some level I was playing out my arguments with King's assumptions about storytelling and "The Craft".  But the story became a meditation on the benevolence of the Creator, on fatherhood, vengeance and the proprietary feelings we all feel toward our loved ones and what happens when that's taken to an unhealthy level.

It was a strange feeling to have my storytelling so guided by someone else.

My story was longer than the word count he later imposed (out of a sense of wise self-preservation, I'm sure) so I never sent it to him or tried to get it published (it wasn't my idea, after all) and throughout the writing of this series, I've been vacillating on whether or not to just post it here and be done with it.  I've decided to do so as a way to encourage you to do the same, if not here then in your own webspace.

Without further ado I invite you to read: "Mine" A macabre little story about Dick & Jane (Opens as a .PDF "GoogleDoc")


Read the previous posts in this series:
Writing With the King: An introduction and summary about why I care and why you should too.

Part I - Designated Dreamers: The truth of memory and the place of writers as society's shepards of the subconscious.

Part II - Bedside Tables: The importance of the mundane as a foil for the fantastic (or the horrifying).

Bedside Tables -- Writing with the King, Part Two

NOTE: This is part two of a sort of live-blogging of the book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, by Stephen King. Why would I do such a thing?  Click Here here for the introduction/explanation.
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Peanuts creator Charles M. Schultz once wrote a forward for a Calvin & Hobbes collection in which he praised Bill Watterson's ability to draw bedside tables.  "Bill Watterson draws wonderful bedside tables.  I admire that.  He also draws great water splashes and living room couches and chairs and lamps and yawns and screams and all the things that make a comic strip fun to look at."

Stephen King draws amazing bedside tables.

Monsters are one thing, but I've often wondered about the ability King has to make us unsettled by the relatively commonplace.  I think it has to do with his ability to draw the bedside tables so clearly.  King's grasp of the real world is so great that he can recreate it for us in all its banality.  This ability to capture the commonplace is his greatest asset and what allows his best work to shine.

Perhaps owing to the periodic disruptions of his childhood idylls by the constant moves and adversities of his hardscrabble upbringing, King as a refined sense of disruption.  He creates a world of complacency and normalcy where his characters begin their journey with everyday problems, ensconced in the daily dreams we know so well.  Because King knows better than anyone that any disruption is measured in relation to these things.  The more comfortable yesterday was, the greater the psychological impact of tomorrow's disruptions.

King never comes out and tells us this, but all of his focus in the first few chapters of the writing section harken to the enforced simplicity of composition and prose championed by grammar mavens mssr's Strunk & White, as well as the bards of King's generation: Hemingway, Steinbeck and Salinger.  Through the chapter on dialogue, King focuses on creating a reality that is clearly defined and drawn in the simplest strokes, offering the reader the maximum opportunity to fill in the blanks themselves, investing in the story.

It is the simplest recipe for compelling, character-driven fiction.  The more invested we are in the normal lives of the characters, the more we pull for them to get through whatever hardship the author has in store.  And the more we are affected by their disruptions and peril.

My feelings about King's writing advice are sometimes mixed.  He presents his opposition to plotting a novel in stark terms just shy of good versus evil.  His absolute conviction that he can throw a bunch of characters into a situation and let them find their own way out is compelling.  And this approach has brought him some fiction that is sublime and some fiction that (I think) falls apart ere the conclusion.  Much of the former certainly could not be improved by imposing a plot outline upon it.  But I'm given to think that a lot of the latter could have been improved had he a bit more of a roadmap to follow from page 1 to page 501.

If the book had been written by a "straight" thriller writer, I'm sure we would have been given the opposite viewpoint and as is so often the case when I am presented with an extreme viewpoint, I tend to think that there's a happy medium between the two.  A 'sweet spot' if you will where the balance is achieved.

And while it may sound arrogant for me of few bylines to contradict the writing advice of a lifetime member of the New York Times bestseller's list, I think that every writing book should, by law, be required to bear a warning label: "Actual mileage may vary."  The only single bit of writing advice that is applicable in all situations and to all writers is "Sit in chair, put words on page."  (And I'm told that the chair is optional.) 

Oh, and read.  I will happily and wholeheartedly endorse King's urging to never stop reading and that those who don't read have no business writing.  I'm reminded of Twain's maxim that "Those who won't read have no advantage of those who can't."  Failure to read means you have no idea what's already been done, and like a driver who watches his GPS instead of the road, you may get where your going, but you'll hit every pothole, pedestrian and cliche between you and your goal.


Next: Writing exercises!

Designated Dreamers - Writing with the King Part One

NOTE: Part one of a sort of live-blogging of the book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, by Stephen King.  Click Here here for the introduction/explanation.
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Hyperthymesia is the technical name for people who remember an absurd amount of detail about their personal history.  Frequently as I read memoirs and autobiographies I am struck by the degree of detail that the authors allegedly remember about their lives when I can barely recall what I had for dinner yesterday.  I can only assume in all charity that these folks are compulsive diarists, giving themselves a lot of source material to work with.

Stephen King is not afflicted with this condition.

Mary Carr (author of The Liar's Club) presents her childhood in an almost unbroken panorama.  Mine is a fogged-out landscape from which occaisional memories appear like isolated trees . . . the kind that look as if they might like to grab and eat you.
                    -Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

I'm going to dispense with the first half of the book in a single post because this is a writing blog, not a Stephen King fansite.  I'm honestly not really a big fan of King's books. Some of them I like, some I don't.  I do wish he would write more books with young/old protagonists like It and the oft-maligned Dreamcatcher.  His dreamier stuff is superb as well and I don't really gravitate often to the end of the shelf where things go bump in the night.  I came to him through his short stories and essays.  His short stories are his best stuff, I think and I've posted links before to his essays and op/eds on the state of writing and especially censorship. 

King's memoir is refreshing for its self-effacing humor, candidness and because he allows it to carry the vague uncertainty that most of us feel when discussing our childhood.  And he certainly pulls no punches, though most of them are aimed at himself.

Self-pugilism aside, one is left with little doubt that the kid was destined to write the books he has written.  Something about his childhood and early adulthood made it inevitable.  I tend to think that while anyone really can (and often does) write, there are those who are born to tell the stories other people want to hear and among those few, some are selected to turn them into sculpture, paintings, photographs, movies, plays and books.  Society's designated dreamers.

Stephen King is one of these people and into his hands was pressed the darker sort of dreaming that we do.  Nevertheless, his childhood has that curious carefree quality that even kids in desperate circumstances seem to have the innate ability to eke out of their lives.  Normalcy is in the eye of the beholder, after all.  He and his kid-genius brother Dave seemed to make it work and create a good deal of good memories among the stops on the gypsy road that took them from Wisconsin to Maine in a series of hops from one family member to the next with a single mother trying to make it work in an America that was almost purpose-built to discourage single parenting.

In all honesty, I re-read this book periodically and I usually skip pages 1-100.  (The writing section begins on page 102, but on page 100 he talks about his desk and the place writing and art have in life which I think should never be overlooked.)  Though I don't recall seeing it on the most recent read-through, I seem to recall King telling the reader what page to skip to if they came to read about the writing and didn't care about his childhood.  Maybe an edition edit or my imagination, I don't know.  But I think that  at least the first time you read it, you should read the bio.

Young Stevie King, nor matter how foggy though his memory may be, is presented with the clarity of one of King's best young characters.  A life lived amid disruptions and viewed in retrospect with a wise and writerly eye.  And I think that the adventures and hardships, hopes and dreams of young Stephen King and even the addictions that almost claimed his older incarnation give us a compelling insight into the man and the process by which a sizeable chunk of almost four decades of American popular fiction came into being.

I may not be King's biggest fan, but his approach to the craft, his words, his deft use of language, especially in his short fiction, are a study in American letters.  His influence is undeniable and no matter what you think of what he wrote, I have to admire the way that he wrote most of it.  And though his so-called 'literary standing' is often met with an eye roll by critics, I think his attention to the language will  ultimately save him from the dustbin of history.

Whatever you think about him it's hard to deny that King is a man with things to say and the chops to say them in memorable ways.  What more could you ask for from your designated dreamer?

Writing With the King

In January I made the vow that I was going to 'get you to write' this year.  At the time I had no idea how I was going to pull that off.  I still don't.  As Indiana Jones said in Raiders, "Plan?  I'm making this up as I go..." 

So far this has involved posting a lot of writing advice and links to writing advice written by others.  But here's the thing... it's all bullshit.  Every word of it.  No advice applies to every writer in every situation and most of it only applies to the person who wrote it under the universal caveat "This is what worked for me...".

I've read a lot of books of writing advice.  I did this partly in my former capacity as a bookseller (the travel and reference section was my beat for awhile) and partly as a blogger reviewing these things, but mostly I did it because I like them.  I really do.  In all their contradictory quirky glory, they have a certain charm.  Most of them are at least half biography and there's comfort in knowing that the backgrounds and inner workings of the authors I look up to are just as goofy as I am.

Novels are generally so polished by the time they hit the shelves that the general reader has but a fleeting impression of the man or woman behind the words.  It's a bit like seeing the deck but not the shuffle and assuming that the cards are always in that neat package.  We touch the author's minds when they are at their best (it is hoped) and only in fleeting interviews and at readings do we get to glimpse the authors.  Writing guides show us that even the  best authors start out with the same tools we do.

Last week I posted a link and reaction to a list of lists, the accumulated writing wisdom of the great and the good all gathered in one place.  It really is a great list, and contradicts itself regularly and well worth the time spent reading it.  I find it heartwarming how often the lists contradict one another and the breadth of advice offered is breathtaking. But it underlines certain facts which bear out the central thesis of this blog (if it has one) that there's no magical path between "I want to write" and "I have written" except to sit down and start putting words on a page.

If a writer's to-do list or writing guide cannot be summed up as "Butt in chair, fingers on keys" then ditch it; it's not worth reading.

I don't actually recommend you spend a lot of time reading writing guides (certainly not as many as I have).  One of the reasons why I periodically recommend one here is because there are too many out there and there's such a mindnumbing sameness to them that it's easy to miss the gems.  I talk to agents and editors who tell me that too few aspiring writers spend too little time reading them, but I'd wager that as many aspiring writers spend too much time reading them.  At some point you have to put down the writing book and write your book.

And go easy on the bullshit.  Even if it's mine.

Some few of them are wonderfully light on the bull.  Among the many writing guides on the shelf next to my writing chair, there are three that still have crisp new covers.  They look like that because I keep giving away my copies to friends and other writers I meet who've never read them. There are many good ones out there, but I feel that these are the most honest and straightforward of the bunch and also the most fun to read.  (Humor is important to me in a writing guide.) I've reviewed two of them here: Telling Lies for Fun & Profit by Lawrence Block and Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott.  The third is On Writing by Stephen King.

It's worth noting (or maybe it isn't) that as I sit writing this, an Eric Clapton/BB King song is playing overhead called 'Riding with the King'.  I'm not one to believe in omens, but I choose to take that as a good sign.  I want to spend a bit of time with you, exploring the inside of Stephen King's head.

Don't worry, it's not as scary as it sounds.

We're going to talk a bit about grammar, the value of popular fiction, the ways in which personal experience bleeds into our writing and the value of drawing a decent bedside table.  And along the way I think we should do our due diligence and perform the writing exercises and post the results.  I'm going to whether you do it or not.  So I invite you to come write with me and take a ride with the King.

Stephen King Essay

Someone sent me a link to this great essay written by Stephen King after yet another parent group decided his books didn't belong in their local middle school library. I don't always like King's fiction - often I don't, actually. Horror isn't my cup of tea. But his short fiction is frequently sublime and his essays on writing should be turned into a textbook on writing. Anyway, I like his balanced approach to the subject of censorship, book banning and how it applies to schools...

"Do I think that all books and all ideas should be allowed in school libraries? I do not. Schools are, after all, a "managed" marketplace. Books like "Fanny Hill" and Brett Easton Ellis' gruesome "American Psycho" have a right to be read by people who want to read them, but they don't belong in the libraries of tax-supported American middle schools. Do I think that I have an obligation to fly down to Florida and argue that my books, which are a long way from either "Fanny Hill" or "American Psycho," be replaced on the shelves from which they have been taken? No. My job is writing stories, and if I spent all my time defending the ones I've written already, I'd have no time to write new ones." -Stephen King, 20 March 1992 "The Adventure In Censorship Is Stranger Than Fiction"

Would you like fries with your Twilight?

In a recent interview, Newsweek tried to deconstruct what made David Baldacci's books so damned buoyant despite the weight of negative opinions from the likes of the Newsweek and the New York Times.

"The suggestion that reading a thriller is a kind of civic obligation is questionable, to say the least, and there are plenty of people who dispute that reading potboilers encourages an engagement with more-demanding texts. [...] Baldacci offers a break—and people who care about books should care about him. Whether or not thrillers are crucial for democracy, they are certainly crucial for publishers. Where a more literary book might be considered a success if it sells 50,000 in hardcover, a novel by a writer like Baldacci can sell more than a million." www.newsweek.com/

This is an interesting article, not so much because it's about Baldacci but because even though the alleged premise of the article (as expressed in the subtitle) as a sort of populist defense of the thriller as a genre "David Baldacci's 16 books were all bestsellers. Why do people have such a problem with that?"

The interviewer makes a number of statements that make it clear she's not entirely on-board with her (assigned?) premise.

Baldacci isnt alone in ascending the bestseller lists while the literati stand aside in frustrated amaze. Literature maven Harold Bloom's dismay at the popularity of JK Rowling and her boy wizard is nearly legendary. Stephen King himself once infamously likened his books to the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and a large order of fries. Tasty and momentarily satisfying, but not good for you in the long run.

One gets the impression from some authors that they are embarassed at thier status as the MacDonalds of the bookworld. But what really tends to get me is the distancing of the literati from the very thing that is keeping the industry alive. As they stand aside and decry the blockbuster model that is keeping the presses rolling and the bookstores open, they live under the same tent that is held aloft by the Davinci Codes and Prisoner of Azkaban.

The backlash against genre writers lives in a world that has forgotten that Shakespeare was the equivalent of a sitcom writer for his age. A quill-for-hire who transcended his genre to ascend the heights of historical figures whose very existence will be forever debated. So many of the great classics of our time were salvaged from the slushpile of history by a mixture of lucky happenstance and an author who didn't care what the critics of his or her time had to say and kept plugging away at the quill or typewriter or computer keyboard.

Will future generations see Baldacci as the Dostoevsky of our time? Perhaps not. Will Stephanie Meyer be looked upon by our literary heirs as the unheralded Jane Austen of our age? Not bloody likely. Nor will JK Rowling for that matter, though she might be our JM Barrie or EB White.

I'm constantly reminded as I read articles like the one in Newsweek what the always-pithy GK Chesterton said in an essay about detective fiction:

"By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece."

I was working at the bookstore when the two biggest phenomena of recent eras began and ran their course. What is often forgotten is that JK Rowling's bestseller status was built upon word of mouth. Advanced Reading Copies were sent to booksellers and the story captured their imaginations. The strange little kids fantasy novel broke out as the booksellers recommended it over and over again to teacher and parent alike. I should have held onto my ARC of Sorceror's Stone. I still have my reader's copy of Davinci Code -- which is ironic since I enjoyed Rowling's little book and didn't so much care one way or the other about DC. Nevertheless, I was there when it came down the pipe and read it before most people.

My personal feelings about both books aside, it was almost amusing to watch as the esteem of the booksellers and literati who frequented my store waned in the face of growing commercial success. You can't be good and popular at the same time. That's just the way it is!

Both narratives have problems which I will discuss at another time. Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series has similar flaws in the execution of the ideas to the point where I would put them on a descending scale with Rowling at the top, Dan Brown in the middle and Meyer at the bottom. Yet all three caught the crest of the wave, defied the dismay of their critics and built empires bolstered by their many imitators.

Are they good? That's not for me to say. There are better out there, for certain. But that doesn't invalidate the opinions of the masses. I'm not about to argue for market-driven literary criticism, but the pooh-poohing that happens every time Baldacci, King, Brown, Rowling and Meyer put a new book in the stores ignores a very germane element of their stories that undercuts the criticism: They're obviously telling stories that resonate -- stories we want to hear. Manifest in their sales data and the adherence of their fans.

As he was lambasting Stephanie Meyer as a hack, even King took a moment to point out that the strength of her books is the resonance of the stories she tells. Davinci Code, Harry Potter, and pick-your-thriller by Baldacci (or anyone else) all have one thing in common... they are all crafted from archetypal stories that resonate from a time when such tales were told to stave off the darkness that edged in from the corners of the wilderness beyond our firelight. Some of them are the tales told by the children at a campfire in the backyard, but those stories are simply smaller echoes of the greater tales being related at the fires of the grownups.

In the Newsweek interview, Baldacci suggested that reading thrillers was a democratic institution, a blow struck for literacy. The Newsweek interviewer sniffed at the very idea, but he was right. He was right because the more we tell stories, the greater our hunger grows for more. Every book put into the hands of someone who might not otherwise be willing to read one is a victory for literacy. I don't care what imprint the book has on the spine or who the author is, when people are reading, literacy wins. And one way or another, a literate nation will take care of the industry that feeds its need.

This doesn't necessarily mean we will always throw the greatest literary heroes up the bookcharts, but the taller and stronger the tentpoles that bolster the industry, the better chance the unheralded geniuses have of getting into the tent at all.