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On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft |  | Author: Stephen King
Publisher: New English Library
Category: Book
List Price: £8.99
Buy New: £3.70
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Seller: ajmtrader1000
Rating:  94 reviews
Sales Rank: 961
Media: Paperback
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 4.9 x 1.1
ISBN: 0340820462
Dewey Decimal Number: 920
EAN: 9780340820469
ASIN: 0340820462
Publication Date: September 1, 2001
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| • | New | | • | Mint Condition | | • | Dispatch same day for order received before 12 noon | | • | Guaranteed packaging | | • | No quibbles returns |
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Product Description
At last...the Number 1 bestselling writer offers a unique insight into his life and work as well as inspiring advice and instruction on writing.
Amazon.co.uk Review
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 are right there with the young author as he is tormented by poison ivy, gas-passing baby-sitters, 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 caretaker 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 symbolised 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 HP Lovecraft's arcane vocabulary, Hemingway's leanness, Grisham's authenticity, Richard Dooling's artful obscenity, Jonathan Kellerman's sentence fragments. He explains why Kellerman's 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, Amazon.com
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 94
 Recommended for all July 5, 2010
Amanda
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Brilliant book, and not at all what I expected. It is a hugely entertaining read, helpful for the budding authors (of course) but I would recommend this even if you are not a writer yourself. There is no 'fluff and bluster', just an honest account of how Stephen became who he is today. In places it is laugh out loud, and I found myself constantly making my husband read bits of it. I really can't rate this book highly enough.
Great book June 28, 2010
Petra de Ruiter (Rotterdam, the Netherlands)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is both an autobiography and a book about how to become a writer. It's a great book. Stephen King is an excellent storyteller and he describes his own life in a wonderful way without becoming sentimental. His writing tips are really useful, even if you don't want to become a novelist. I would recommend this book to anybody, even when you are not a Stephen King fan.
Writing June 26, 2010
Michelle Scutt (Azores, Portugal)
Excellent on two levels, a highly entertaining autobiography of a writer whom I confess I have never read, as his usual genre doesnt interest me much. So helpful and informative on writing, should be by every budding writers bedside.
 Enlightening but nothing more than can be found on author website's June 16, 2010
A. L. Rutter (Portsmouth, UK)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book is a curious mix of King's memoirs and some of his thoughts on what helps to make a successful writer. It was an odd book for me to pick up, since I have not read a single Stephen King book (a fact of which I'm obscurely proud!) However, I am rather in awe of the fact that he consistently churns out best-selling doorstop novels, and I figured he would have interesting things to say about how to write.
I was not wrong at all - he wrote very easily about the dos and, more crucially, the don'ts of writing, and I was fascinated by some of his methods. The idea that he often proceeds into massive novels with no more than a 'what if?' scenario is, frankly, amazing.
The problem was that I ended up far more interested in the memoir aspect of this little book. The snippets of his life - covering humorous escapades with his brother; his fight against alcoholism; and the course his published career took. I would have liked to read far more of this.
In fact, I concur with a number of the other reviewers - this book didn't know whether it was an autobiography or a 'how-to' manual on writing, and suffered as a result. I do think that either could have stood up to being a lengthier book in its own right.
Overall, a neat little look at the craft of a writer, but King does not say anything new and certainly doesn't say anything more enlightening than you can find for free on any decent author's website these days.
A Formula for Successful Writing June 8, 2010
Ila France Porcher, author of My Sunset Rendezvous (France)
This is Stephen King's formula for successful writing, including how to find an agent and publisher. Interwoven with this important information are parts of his own story of becoming a successful writer. Often poignant, often funny, and always interesting and surprising, this book brings the reader subjective as well as constructive help.
Even if you have no intention of writing a word, its autobiographical material makes the book well worth reading if you admire the works and imagination of Stephen King. "On Writing" provides an enlightening window upon the life and thoughts of one of our times' greatest fictional writers.
This book was all I had to guide me when I wanted to write a book, and I found that all I needed was right there between its covers. So it is from personal experience that I can tell you that for solid help with a developing career in writing, look no farther, and you will find a fascinating read at the same time.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 94
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