The craft of writing
I’m fond of authors who educate and delight their readers with clarity and humility. They inspire me to work on my craft. Your time on Athenarium, after all, deserves better writing. Keen to improve, I picked up On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King. This short post shares the big lessons I took from King on craft, the creative process, and perseverance.
Hard work
While bad writers are unlikely to become authors through learning and practice alone, every writer can improve their craft with plenty of reading, writing and hard work. Plenty, however, is an understatement. King is talking about four to six hours of reading and writing every single day. He describes, for example, how Anthony Trollope wrote for 2.5 hours every morning before he left for full time work. King himself allocates his mornings to new compositions, afternoons to naps and letters, and evenings for reading, family, revisions, and Red Sox games. He aims for about 2,000 words every day, and reads about 70 to 80 novels a year. King doesn’t take breaks. Not even on Christmas. This is easy for him because he loves his work.
Closed doors
King’s writing happens in two stages. The first involves writing behind ‘closed doors’. This is where you write to yourself and your ideal reader (King’s ideal reader is his wife and author, Tabby King). The second phase involves rewriting and editing with the ‘doors open’. This is where you remove unneeded elements, refine your story and welcome feedback.
To write behind ‘closed doors’, King recommends a ‘far-seeing place’ — a place for you to read, think and write. Many prolific thinkers have one. Michelle Obama, for example, recalls how her husband (Barack) flew to Bali to finish his first memoir. Bill Gates, likewise, makes biannual getaway trips to a secluded cabin in the Pacific Northwest to read and think.
Stephen’s formula
Editing is just as important as the first draft. The goal here is coherence. We delete any word, sentence, or passage that isn’t useful to the piece. While there’s no secret formula to writing or editing, there’s one equation that King likes to keep in mind: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft — 10%. We tend to say more than we really ought to.
“The only kind of writing is rewriting.”
Ernest Hemingway
Creative process
It’s pointless to ask King where he gets his ideas. He himself doesn’t know. The challenge, he says, is not in creating new ideas, but in recognising them when they appear. King’s inspiration for Carrie, for example, came from an article he read on poltergeists and his reflections on high school life.
But the idea alone wasn’t enough. The book wasn’t coming along as he’d like. And King actually contemplated abandoning Carrie altogether if not for the urging and encouragement from his wife. He draws two lessons from this experience. Firstly, our own sense of quality can be incorrect. Secondly, we shouldn’t abandon a project just because we find it difficult. Sometimes we have to follow through. The paperback rights for Carrie sold for $400,000 in 1973 — his breakthrough novel.
The creativity myth
King also disagrees with the notion that great writing springs from spontaneity or a flurry of inspiration. Good writers, he says, follow a disciplined work ethic. Similarly, in recounting his own battle with alcohol and drug abuse, King argues that the relationship between “creative endeavour and mind-altering substances is one of the great pop-intellectual myths”. People abuse alcohol and drugs due to addiction. Any form of creative rationalisation is self-serving.
Plotting with King
While narration, description, and dialogue are central elements of a story, King rarely plots the direction of his books. He allows his characters, events, and settings to evolve organically. This, he believes, makes more natural writing. In this way, King likens the process of storytelling to ancient fossils. It’s the job of the author to uncover what lies underneath.
Writer’s toolbox
To hone our craft, we need a good toolbox. The top layer of our toolbox, King says, is vocabulary and grammar. But he doesn’t dwell long on vocabulary. He says great writers can find success with all sorts of words. His only tip here is to use the first colourful and appropriate word that comes to mind.
On grammar, King offers three good ideas. Firstly, King shows that even simple noun-verb constructions like “plums deify” can have poetic weight. Secondly, he hates writing that relies on the passive voice. Not only is it hard for readers to understand, it is a signal of an unsure writer. Finally, he says that “the adverb is not your friend”. Where possible, writers should use expressive verbs instead. He asks readers, for example, to compare “he closed the door firmly” with “he slammed the door”.
The second layer in the toolbox are the elements of style. Accessible books contain short paragraphs and plenty of white space. While paragraphs are important “maps of intent”, they are also “important for how they look”. Since “writing is refined thinking”, King says good authors must be able to organise their thoughts and paragraphs well. Once again, rewriting and editing is key. The more we read and write, the better our feel for paragraphing, the rhythm and composition.
Youthful optimism
King recalls the endless rejections he faced throughout his early career. Not only from magazines, newspapers and publishers, but from his high school teachers as well. Reflecting on the wall of magazine rejection slips in his youth, he describes “optimism [as] a perfectly legitimate response to failure”.
He also reflects on the challenges of an early career writer. While working full time as a teacher, he often found himself too exhausted for writing come evening. He recalls how his younger self despaired about his future as a writer. King credits his perseverance, in part, to his wife’s love and support. It helped him to push through his self doubts.
“Time was on my side; sooner or later the best-selling writers of the sixties and seventies would either die or go senile, making room for newcomers like me”.
Stephen King – On Writing, A Memoir of the Craft
Rules for life
For better or worse, many writers carry their early reputations around, set in stone by critics of their past. In King’s view, a lot of literary criticism exists to “reinforce a caste system which is as old as the intellectual snobbery which nurtured it”. I think this rings true in many fields (look at economics today). It helps to remember that you cannot please everyone. Likewise, King advises against perfectionism and excessive attention to detail. Unless you’re wired that way, you’re risking the joy of writing itself. Deriving satisfaction from the journey and process is a good rule for life in general.
References
- King, S. (2000). On Writing: A Memoir of The Craft. More on Stephen King is available at < https://stephenking.com/ >