{"id":19333,"date":"2019-01-10T15:44:19","date_gmt":"2019-01-10T20:44:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/?p=19333"},"modified":"2019-01-27T15:01:42","modified_gmt":"2019-01-27T20:01:42","slug":"on-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/en\/on-writing\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen King’s On Writing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Any writer who cares about craft will enjoy “On Writing”, the style guide memoir Stephen King<\/a> published in the millennial\u00a0year.<\/p>\n

King knows how to get and keep the attention of his reader. I read “On Writing” so quickly, you’d think someone was racing me to the finish. King covers his struggles with alcoholism, insecurities, confidence and hero worship between nuggets of writing wisdom.<\/p>\n

Simple Sentence Creation<\/h2>\n

My favourite quote concerns simple sentences. You’ll find it on page 121.<\/p>\n

Take any noun, put it with any verb, and you have a sentence. It never fails. Rocks explode. Jane transmits. Mountains float. These are all perfect sentences. Many such thoughts make little rational sense, but even the stranger ones (Plums deify!) have a kind of poetic weight that’s nice. The simplicity of noun-verb constructions is useful-at the very least it can provide a safety net for for your writing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Writing Process<\/h2>\n

About halfway through the book (page 209), he compares Kurt Vonnegut’s writing process with his own. Both of them sound like torture to me, but he specifically mentions that not all writers\u00a0follow the same routine.<\/p>\n

With the door shut, downloading what’s in my head directly to the page, I write as fast as I can and still remain comfortable. Writing fiction, especially a long work of fiction, can be a difficult, lonely job; it’s like crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a bathtub. There’s plenty of opportunity for self-doubt. If I write rapidly, putting down my story exactly as it comes into my mind, only looking back to check the names os my characters and the relevant parts of their back stories, I find that I can keep up with my original enthusiasm and at the same time outrun the self-doubt that’s always waiting to settle in.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Reading Suggestion<\/h2>\n

King finishes On Writing with three pages of “the best books he read over the past three or four years” (ie from 1996-2000).<\/p>\n

I highly recommend the only nonfiction title I knew from that list: Bill Bryson’s\u00a0“A Walk in the Woods.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Any writer who cares about craft will enjoy “On Writing”, the style guide memoir Stephen King published in the millennial\u00a0year. King knows how to get and keep the attention of his reader. I read “On Writing” so quickly, you’d think someone was racing me to the finish. King covers his struggles with alcoholism, insecurities, confidence […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19334,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_wp_convertkit_post_meta":{"form":"-1","landing_page":"0","tag":"0","restrict_content":"0"},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[843,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-writing","post-wrapper","thrv_wrapper"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2buQs-51P","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":16872,"url":"https:\/\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/en\/writing-course\/","url_meta":{"origin":19333,"position":0},"title":"Writing Assistance","author":"Tracey Arial","date":"January 20, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Registration for my next course will be opening soon. In the meantime, select this page to get writing tips by email.","rel":"","context":"In "Communications"","block_context":{"text":"Communications","link":"https:\/\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/en\/category\/services\/communications\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2186,"url":"https:\/\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/en\/rhythmic-writing\/","url_meta":{"origin":19333,"position":1},"title":"June 16: Rhythmic Writing","author":"Tracey Arial","date":"June 16, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Most people recognize that poets, Dr. Seuss and Shakespeare use rhythm to make stories more powerful, but any writer can do the same. Consider using similar effects in your own stories. Readers react to the sound of the words they hear in their head as they read. By varying the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Journalism"","block_context":{"text":"Journalism","link":"https:\/\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/en\/category\/writing\/notable-nonfiction\/journalism\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/agu6OrflE-E\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":969,"url":"https:\/\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/en\/dorothy-stang\/","url_meta":{"origin":19333,"position":2},"title":"Sister Dorothy Stang’s Death in the Amazon Rainforest","author":"Tracey Arial","date":"September 3, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Two weeks ago, on Tuesday August 23, Brazil's Supreme Court decided that rancher Regivaldo Pereira Galv\u00e3o has the right to freedom until his appeal is heard. He left prison the following day. Galv\u00e3o\u00a0is one of five men convicted in the assassination of Sister Dorothy Stang, a Catholic missionary who worked\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Seasonal Living"","block_context":{"text":"Seasonal Living","link":"https:\/\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/en\/category\/seasonal-living\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/DorothyStang.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":17148,"url":"https:\/\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/en\/reference-books-writing\/","url_meta":{"origin":19333,"position":3},"title":"Improve your Craft with a Writing Reference Book","author":"Tracey Arial","date":"January 26, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Are you a word nerd? If so, consider getting a writing reference book from the following list and support your passion and my work at the same time. If you choose to buy one of these books through my affiliate links, I get a few cents although you don't pay\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Writing"","block_context":{"text":"Writing","link":"https:\/\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/en\/category\/writing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":17128,"url":"https:\/\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/en\/points-of-departure\/","url_meta":{"origin":19333,"position":4},"title":"Points of Departure","author":"Tracey Arial","date":"February 14, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"My favourite nonfiction book is James Moffett's Points of Departure. Moffett has collected 58 of his favourite examples of short narrative nonfiction to\u00a0display\u00a0five specific forms: interaction, notation, recollection, investigation and cogitation. The examples stem from 1919 until 1983. Each is a gem worth reading. His first example, the Coca Cola\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Book Reviews"","block_context":{"text":"Book Reviews","link":"https:\/\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/en\/category\/writing\/notable-nonfiction\/book-reviews\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":16564,"url":"https:\/\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/en\/a-rich-kings-daughter\/","url_meta":{"origin":19333,"position":5},"title":"A rich Kings\u2019 daughter","author":"Tracey Arial","date":"June 3, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"The Kings\u2019 daughters (Filles du Roi) who came to Canada between 1663 and 1673 under are often described as poor, orphaned or prostitutes. Yet my ancestor Catherine Clerice doesn\u2019t seem to fit that description. Catherine was indeed recruited by Louis XIV\u2019s team and she did indeed get a dowry of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Genealogy Ensemble"","block_context":{"text":"Genealogy Ensemble","link":"https:\/\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/en\/category\/history-worth-remembering\/genealogy-ensemble-history-worth-remembering\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/KingsOnWriting.jpg?fit=255%2C385&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19333"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19342,"href":"https:\/\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19333\/revisions\/19342"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}