On Writing
Stephen King
(Hodder & Stoughton, 238pp; £16.99)
Stephen King? On Writing? Good God, surely not. The man’s a hack. A crowd-pleaser. A shelf-stacker. A box-shifter. Why, by his own admission, he believes that “book-buyers aren’t attracted, by and large, by the literary merits of a novel; book-buyers want a good story to take with them on the airplane, something that will at first fascinate them, then pull them in and keep turning the pages.” What on earth could possibly be learned from such a philistine?
A lot, as it happens. Of all the dreaded Big Dogs of airport fiction — Grisham, Clancy, Forsyth, Francis, Steele, let alone Archer — he is easily the most resourceful as well as the most likeable, and the one whose prose style provides least offense to the more refined sensibility. And in novels like Misery, The Dark Half and Bag Of Bones, he’s actually used the inner life of a writer as his subject-matter.
Anyone familiar with Danse Macabre, King’s idiosyncratic survey of the dark fantasy genre, or with the garrulous introductions he’s written for some of his own books as well as for those of writers he admires, like Neil Gaiman, Harlan Ellison and Joe Bob Briggs, will know that, after the show, there’s nothing Big Steve loves more than to wipe off his scary make-up, raise the house lights and hunker down for a chat with the punters. This time around, he obviously feels that there’s plenty to talk about.
On Writing splits into three parts. The first, ‘CV’, is a chatty literary autobiography (including a ‘my drink and drug hell’ interlude), and the last, ‘On Living: A Postscript,’ is the author’s memoir of the near-fatal road accident he sustained partway through the composition of the central section which gives the book its title. His account of the incident itself is scarcely more harrowing than his description of how he forced himself to resume writing. “It occurs to me,” he writes sardonically, “that I have been nearly killed by a character right out of one of my own novels. It’s almost funny.”
What Big Steve doesn’t mention is that he subsequently purchased the vehicle which almost did him in purely so that he could benefit from the cathartic exercise of smashing it up with a sledgehammer, as if it was some kind of malevolent possessed-o-mobile like the titular Cadillac from his own Christine. What he could not have known is that by the time On Writing was published, its driver, the iconically lumpen Bryan Smith, would himself be dead.
The ‘educational’ section of the book will prove illuminating for King’s fans, but its hard-advice content is strictly of the zero-sum kind. In other words, following his dicta is no guarantee of success, though ignoring them will almost certainly ensure failure. Avoid adverbs, don’t staple the manuscript, prioritise situation over plot, write for yourself and edit for others: that kind of thing. He makes no attempt to snake-oil the reader into awaiting revelation of what he calls “The Magic Secrets Of Writing.” “There aren’t any,” he confesses. “Bummer, huh?”
Instead, he bases the section on “… two theses, both simple. The first is that good writing consists of mastering the fundamentals (vocabulary, grammar, the elements of style) … the second is that while it is impossible to make a competent writer out of a bad writer, and while it is equally impossible to make a great writer out of a good one, it is possible, with lots of hard work, dedication, and timely help, to make a good writer out of a merely competent one.”
In other words, truly bad writers are beyond help (even when some of them turn out to be best-sellers; this means you, Jeffrey). Truly great writers are beyond explanation (even once the critical theorists have wielded their safe-cracking tools). That leaves the rest of us.
Ultimately, however, technique is simply a platform upon which a writer builds whatever he or she can. Mastering technique is simply the entry qualification. The rest is simply personal magic, and King has been blessed with more of it than any other writer in his league.
“Some of this book — perhaps too much — has been about how I learned to do it,” Big Steve acknowledges in his peroration. “The rest of it — and perhaps the best of it — is a permission slip: you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough, you will. Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.”
Independent, 2001
