Book Report - Stephen King - On Writing

I suppose many of you will be happy to know that I'm studying the art of writing. And most of you I'm sure will be even happier if I learned a little grammar too! You'll be proud of me some day. Last nite I finished Stephen King's On Writing A memoir of the craft. I've never read any of his work. I did enjoy this, his only work of non-fiction. Stephen writes funny stuff. And for each point or topic he covers, he does so with very personal anectodes. He brought along a couple of his demons for show-and-tell. I often find that a genius has their fair share of them, and it's encouraging to me since I have more than mine! The book is divided into three major parts. The first is an auto-biography, the second deals with writing specifically, and the third is sub-titled On Living, where he describes the story of his run-in with a van on a highway that damn near killed him in the summer of 1999. Although the broader points he makes are related to writing fiction, he addresses plenty of the basics that apply to any wannabe writer. Vocabulary, grammar, active versus passive verbs and oh so much more. Microsoft Word is always telling me I'm using passive verbs, wonder why? I just click-ignore-all that stuff anyway! The story is the boss for Stephen, and all of his other recommendations regarding style, etc., take a secondary and supporting role to the boss. He describes a process where after he gets a story-idea and some characters started he lets them tell the rest of the story. It's zen-like (my description, not his) in that you have to pay attention and let things be. I like that idea. It's all in there, just be quiet and dig it up. Of course to become good at the art he says, you have to read and write a lot. He provides a list of about 100 books he says he's read in the last 3 or 4 years. I came away from the book inspired and thankful that Stephen shared so much of himself with me. It's the sharing that gets me back to my own writing practice every time.