On Writing

An enjoyable book. Part memoir, part writing guide, but more a profile of one person's particular creative genius than a "How To". It's least effective when trying to inspire the novelist-to-be ("Work at it four hours a day, and it shouldn't feel like work if you're passionate about it" isn't actually advice about how to be good at something) but there's lots of great wisdom from a master, and as a book it practices what it preaches. The first book I've ever read by Stephen King, and I'll read more.

Jeg har aldri hatt spesiell interesse for Stephen King, verken typen eller forfatterskapet. Det har nok med at han skremte vettet av meg med Firestarters en gang på 1980-tallet, og siden har jeg ikke hatt behov for å lese noe av ham. Før nå. Denne boken var helt grei gjennom første del, som var en slags CV over hans tilblivelse som forfatter. Men så løsnet det. Han ble mer personlig, og handlingen som det å skrive er, ble mer nær, og plutselig ble det en interessant bok likevel. Nå er Stephen King en litt mer aktuell forfatter, og 23.11.63 står på leselista mi.

This was the second time I read this book, though it is a newer edition than the one I read a few years ago. I enjoyed it on the first reading, and enjoyed it just as much on my second reading, so I don't see any need to change anything in my first review, which you can find here: Stephen King: On Writing.

There are, however a couple of things I can add.

My main reason for re-reading King's book was that someone said it was the source of the adverbophobia that seems to afflict so many participants in writing discussions on social networks. I couldn't recall that from my reading of the book, so I looked at it again, and yes, King does recommend removing unnecessary adverbs, but also recommends removing other unnecessary words as well.

He gives a couple of interesting examples in one of his first drafts, and how he edited it. He removed one adverb, "shortly", in the edit, but left another, "heartily". And he explained -- he removed the first because it contributed nothing to the story, but left the second because it revealed something about the character and role of the speaker.

I couple of days ago I was reading a text and came across "shortly". Because I'd been thinking about adverbs, I wondered if I should remove it just because it was an adverb. I decided not to; it was an article on history, and removing it would make the text vaguer and less precise. But in the place where [a:Stephen King|3389|Stephen King|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1362814142p2/3389.jpg] removed it from his own text it contributed nothing to the story, so it could be removed.

Actually I think he could also have warned about adjectives. King has written several horror stories, but in the ones I have read he has never used the adjective "eldrich", which seems to be much loved by writers of third-rate dreck.