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On On Writing
Feb. 5th, 2010 06:44 pmThe conversation in my previous post, which involved my brother and books and talking about writing, reminded me of something else I'd meant to blog about that got bumped off the back of the stove with how quickly things moved in my personal life in the days after Christmas.
If I want to give Stephen King unqualified praise, I'll talk about him as a storyteller. If I want to find something to criticize about his work, I'll talk about him as a writer (thereby ruining his whole day, no doubt). This is among the reasons I'd never picked up On Writing, despite having a fierce mad love for his previous non-fiction book, Danse Macabre. To me, Danse Macabre was a kind of rambling treatise on storytelling and it was great. I didn't think On Writing would suck, I just thought I'd come away from it disappointed.
But I'd recommended Danse Macabre to my brother some years back, not because he was a giant Stephen King fan or because he's big on horror or because he's terribly interested in storytelling but because he'd really liked Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics and the parts of Understanding Comics that didn't strike me as worthless, obvious, and insufferable reminded me of Danse Macabre. He read it and evidently enjoyed it, because this year he decided to hit me back by giving me a copy of Stephen King's "memoir on the craft".
My worries about being disappointed were unfounded... among other things, the fact that I had those worries meant that my expectations weren't actually elevated, which is what would have led to disappointment. Funny how that works out. I don't know which of the two books I prefer. I really couldn't say which one is "better"... I think both books would be tremendously useful to anybody who wants to be a writer or a storyteller, but which book is more valuable depends on what you're working with and what you're working towards. I recommend them both. If somebody is in a situation where they could only possibly gain access to one or the other over the course of their lifetime, I'm afraid I'm paralyzed with indecision and unable to offer a recommendation. I'm sorry, I'm so very sorry.
There is a lot of good advice to be had in On Writing, but there's a passage that stands out... it is, purely by chance, the first passage I read, as the book happened to fall open to it in a very providential fashion.
It concerns a young King's efforts to sell his classmates his "novelization" of the Matheson-penned, Roger Corman-directed film version of The Pit and the Pendulum (my second favorite Vincent Price movie, incidentally, behind The Masque of the Red Death and just ahead of The Abominable Dr. Phibes). It's a cute image, as far as Portraits of the Author as a Young Man go, but the reason it stood out... and the reason I found it providential... is his teacher's reaction to it, and the moral that King takes away from it.
-On Writing, pp. 49-50, by Stephen King.
And that really says it. I'm sure somebody will read this and go "If I were Stephen King I'd be ashamed of what I write, too, hurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr", but I don't think he's wrong in including himself in a universal class of authors being despised for how they exercise their gifts. I think I've posted what some of Shakespeare's contemporaries had to say about him at the time.
This is the flipside of "You can't write for everybody." Your work will be a waste of somebody's time, and they might seek you out to tell you that... but their time is theirs to spend. If they spent it on your work and didn't enjoy it, what are you supposed to do... refund it to them?
If I want to give Stephen King unqualified praise, I'll talk about him as a storyteller. If I want to find something to criticize about his work, I'll talk about him as a writer (thereby ruining his whole day, no doubt). This is among the reasons I'd never picked up On Writing, despite having a fierce mad love for his previous non-fiction book, Danse Macabre. To me, Danse Macabre was a kind of rambling treatise on storytelling and it was great. I didn't think On Writing would suck, I just thought I'd come away from it disappointed.
But I'd recommended Danse Macabre to my brother some years back, not because he was a giant Stephen King fan or because he's big on horror or because he's terribly interested in storytelling but because he'd really liked Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics and the parts of Understanding Comics that didn't strike me as worthless, obvious, and insufferable reminded me of Danse Macabre. He read it and evidently enjoyed it, because this year he decided to hit me back by giving me a copy of Stephen King's "memoir on the craft".
My worries about being disappointed were unfounded... among other things, the fact that I had those worries meant that my expectations weren't actually elevated, which is what would have led to disappointment. Funny how that works out. I don't know which of the two books I prefer. I really couldn't say which one is "better"... I think both books would be tremendously useful to anybody who wants to be a writer or a storyteller, but which book is more valuable depends on what you're working with and what you're working towards. I recommend them both. If somebody is in a situation where they could only possibly gain access to one or the other over the course of their lifetime, I'm afraid I'm paralyzed with indecision and unable to offer a recommendation. I'm sorry, I'm so very sorry.
There is a lot of good advice to be had in On Writing, but there's a passage that stands out... it is, purely by chance, the first passage I read, as the book happened to fall open to it in a very providential fashion.
It concerns a young King's efforts to sell his classmates his "novelization" of the Matheson-penned, Roger Corman-directed film version of The Pit and the Pendulum (my second favorite Vincent Price movie, incidentally, behind The Masque of the Red Death and just ahead of The Abominable Dr. Phibes). It's a cute image, as far as Portraits of the Author as a Young Man go, but the reason it stood out... and the reason I found it providential... is his teacher's reaction to it, and the moral that King takes away from it.
"What I don't understand, Stevie," she said, "is why you'd write junk like this in the first place. You're talented. Why do you want to waste your abilities?"
...
She waited for me to answer--to her credit, the question was not rhetorical--but I had no answer to give. I was ashamed. I have spent a good many years since--too many, I think--being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction and poetry who has ever published a line has been accused of wasting his or her God-given talents. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all. I'm not editorializing, just trying to give you the facts as I see them.
-On Writing, pp. 49-50, by Stephen King.
And that really says it. I'm sure somebody will read this and go "If I were Stephen King I'd be ashamed of what I write, too, hurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr", but I don't think he's wrong in including himself in a universal class of authors being despised for how they exercise their gifts. I think I've posted what some of Shakespeare's contemporaries had to say about him at the time.
This is the flipside of "You can't write for everybody." Your work will be a waste of somebody's time, and they might seek you out to tell you that... but their time is theirs to spend. If they spent it on your work and didn't enjoy it, what are you supposed to do... refund it to them?
