|
| On Writing | 
 enlarge | Author: Stephen King
Publisher: Pocket
Category: Book
List Price: $7.99
Buy Used: $3.74
You Save: $4.25 (53%)
New (37) Used (54) from $3.74
Avg. Customer Rating:  807 reviews
Sales Rank: 706
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 6.7 x 4.2 x 1
ISBN: 0743455967
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780743455961
ASIN: 0743455967
Publication Date: July 1, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: **Books may NOT include Online Access Codes (InfoTrac, MyEconLab).** Books MAY contain highlighting, writing, and/or bent pages. We ship M - F.
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Accessories:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
Short and snappy as it is, Stephen King's On Writing really contains two books: a fondly sardonic autobiography and a tough-love lesson for aspiring novelists. The memoir is terrific stuff, a vivid description of how a writer grew out of a misbehaving kid. You're right there with the young author as he's tormented by poison ivy, gas-passing babysitters, uptight schoolmarms, and a laundry job nastier than Jack London's. It's a ripping yarn that casts a sharp light on his fiction. This was a child who dug Yvette Vickers from Attack of the Giant Leeches, not Sandra Dee. "I wanted monsters that ate whole cities, radioactive corpses that came out of the ocean and ate surfers, and girls in black bras who looked like trailer trash." But massive reading on all literary levels was a craving just as crucial, and soon King was the published author of "I Was a Teen-Age Graverobber." As a young adult raising a family in a trailer, King started a story inspired by his stint as a janitor cleaning a high-school girls locker room. He crumpled it up, but his writer wife retrieved it from the trash, and using her advice about the girl milieu and his own memories of two reviled teenage classmates who died young, he came up with Carrie. King gives us lots of revelations about his life and work. The kidnapper character in Misery, the mind-possessing monsters in The Tommyknockers, and the haunting of the blocked writer in The Shining symbolized his cocaine and booze addiction (overcome thanks to his wife's intervention, which he describes). "There's one novel, Cujo, that I barely remember writing." King also evokes his college days and his recovery from the van crash that nearly killed him, but the focus is always on what it all means to the craft. He gives you a whole writer's "tool kit": a reading list, writing assignments, a corrected story, and nuts-and-bolts advice on dollars and cents, plot and character, the basic building block of the paragraph, and literary models. He shows what you can learn from H.P. Lovecraft's arcane vocabulary, Hemingway's leanness, Grisham's authenticity, Richard Dooling's artful obscenity, Jonathan Kellerman's sentence fragments. He explains why Hart's War is a great story marred by a tin ear for dialogue, and how Elmore Leonard's Be Cool could be the antidote. King isn't just a writer, he's a true teacher. --Tim Appelo
Product Description
"Long live the King" hailed Entertainment Weekly upon the publication of Stephen King's On Writing. Part memoir, part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writer's craft, comprising the basic tools of the trade every writer must have. King's advice is grounded in his vivid memories from childhood through his emergence as a writer, from his struggling early career to his widely reported near-fatal accident in 1999 -- and how the inextricable link between writing and living spurred his recovery. Brilliantly structured, friendly and inspiring, On Writing will empower and entertain everyone who reads it -- fans, writers, and anyone who loves a great story well told.
Download Description
For years I dreamed of having the sort of massive oak slab that would dominate a room.... In 1981 I got the one I wanted and placed it in the middle of a spacious, skylighted study in the rear of the house. For six years I sat behind that desk either drunk or wrecked out of my mind.... A year or two after I sobered up, I got rid of that monstrosity and put in a living-room suite where it had been....In the early nineties, before they moved on to their own lives, my kids sometimes came up in the evening to watch a basketball game or a movie and eat pizza....I got another desk -- it's handmade, beautiful, and half the size of the T. rex desk. I put it at the far west end of the office, in a corner under the eave....I'm sitting under it now, a fifty-three-year-old man with bad eyes, a gimp leg, and no hangover. I'm doing what I know how to do, and as well as I know how to do it. I came through all the stuff I told you about ... and now I'm going to tell you as much as I can about the job.... It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn't in the middle of the room. Life isn't a support-system for art. It's the other way around. --
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 802 more reviews...
 Cool September 5, 2008
I thought that it was cool he did this. It was a quick read, and it wasn't Earth shattering, but I thought it was insightful. Quirky guy.
1/2 Memoir, 1/2 how to... September 3, 2008
An easy read. Though I skimmed much of the 1st 1/2 which is mainly memoir and a bit dull at times. Though I thoroughly enjoyed reading about King's alcohol and drug problems.
In the 2nd 1/2 King talks about writing and publishing. He explains how he works (he doesn't believe in days off) and how one might go about getting published. The actual writing advice itself is not new--leave out adverbs--don't say in 3 words what you can say with 1, etc.
I think it's a great book for a beginning writer to start with.
 A Writer's Story; A Writer's Craft August 29, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Mr. King's story of his development into a noted and successful writer and his description of the writing craft is only one man's story, but a unique and inspiring one. Think of it as the first half of his autobiography - may he live long and well! Also, think of it as his tutorial and elucidation on how to write something worth reading. Two tales in one unique book.
King's early life was tumultuous; the reader begins to see how the writer of rather unusual stories was formed. After learning about his extended starving artist time, the reader easily celebrates his well-earned success and acclaim. His recovery from the near-fatal attack by a minivan illustrates real grit, and the extremely positive influence of his wife on his life it wonderful. King is almost as interesting a character as he the many he give us in his best books.
The greatest value of the book, however, at least to writers and wanna-be's, is in his candid explanations on how to compose, edit, re-compose, edit, edit again, re-write, proofread, and cut until the manuscript shines. Even for a master and journeyman like Mr. King, writing top-notch fiction requires focus, sweat, and time. It's tiring. I imagine if he could work more than four concentrated hours a day he would. While his description of the author's daily life is not glamorous, it nonetheless is realistic, and illustrates how a true writer can never be satisfied NOT writing.
Whether or not you usually read Mr. King's variety of fiction, if you even dabble a small amount as a writer you can benefit tremendously from what he has included in this wonderful volume.
This is how it's done! August 13, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Until I read On Writing by Stephen King, I had never read any of his books. To be honest, since On Writing, I've only read one other of his books which I didn't like so we've come to an impasse.... however On Writing is one of the best books I've read. The first half is a memoir of his life where we learn how his early jobs and experiences inspired the ideas for his best sellers. Every thing King sees becomes an obvious cue for him to think "what if". He is a prolific writer and I admire his constant discipline at sitting down and typing his heart out. He finishes a novel and then writes a novella followed by a short story and then he's back to a new novel. The man has ideas a plenty simply by always asking himself "what if" and then writing it down.
The second half of the book is a lesson on how to write. King has much authority on the subject not only due to his global success but also because he was an English teacher before the phenomenal success of Carrie back in the 70s. He teaches how to pair nouns with verbs so we can make sentences that come alive; for example, Rocks explode, which immediately takes the reader to a place where they can envisage rocks exploding... it's all about showing the story rather than telling the reader a bunch of words.
Stephen King is a master writer and teacher. A great book which even a non-writer will enjoy because King shows the reader, his Constant Reader, just how much fun you can have.
 Order #3b August 12, 2008
0 out of 5 found this review helpful
The postal service lost the product and so we never received it, but amazon quickly refunded the money.
|
|
|
| |
