Publishing & Books : On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

EUR 3,73


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

The Building Blocks for a Fiction Writing Career - Every course I ever took about writing discouraged me from writing fiction. The process described seemed unnatural, uninteresting, and unbelievably complex. So I became a nonfiction writer. Mr. Stephen King s memoir and observations about his methods has totally turned that around. He proposes a method that works much like the way I write nonfiction. Following his advice, I feel like I can create and enjoy creating novels now. That is a wonderful gift, and I appreciate the insights very much. I also wondered how a novelist goes from aspiring to full-time writer. The detailed descriptions here gave me many ah-ha experiences. Mr. King s horrible accident made me curious about how his recovery was going. I was fascinated by the long postscript that describes how the writing part of the memoir was written during his painful rehabilitation and mending.This book should be read by everyone who loves fiction writing, whether as a reader or a writer. If salty language bothers you, that will be a drawback. I deliberately listened to the unabridged audiocassette so that I could hear the nuances of meaning from his voice and timing. I m glad I did.Mr. King s great strength is that he tells it like it is, and does so as simply as possible.His description of letting a novel tell itself through the characters, starting from a fascinating situation, struck me as an enormous insight. In nonfiction, the equivalent is to start with a painful problem that almost everyone has. Then tell stories that take the reader inside the solution. Be honest and genuine in how you do it. I suddenly realized that nonfiction writers have an advantage because we can test our stories with those who lived them. The fiction writers have to use their own mental ear and those of readers to do the same thing.After you finish reading this book, you definitely should try out his suggestion to write a thousand words a day. I know it sounds like a lot, but your speed and facility will rapidly increase. And it really does feel like being more alive!Tell the truth!

Was Besseres gibt s von Stephen King nicht - Stephen King hat sich selbst übertroffen mit On Writing. Dieses Buch ist die Krone von Kings Werk, es vermittelt unübertroffene Einsichten in sein Schaffen und stellt zugleich die Klammer dar, die sein Werk umspannt.King hat sich in vielen seiner Romane mit Autorschaft und Schreiben beschäftigt, nicht umsonst sagt er in On Writing, dass in jedem seiner Charaktere etwas von ihm zu finden sei ,-) Am deutlichsten ist das in Misery, das King in On Writing auch ausführlich kommentiert und das die radikalste und konsequenteste Darstellung der Beziehung zwischen Autor und Leser darstellt, die ich kenne.On Writing ist weniger ein Handbuch für hoffnungsfrohe Schreibnovizen, sondern am ehesten eine Autobiographie von Stephen King, in der er über sich und das Wichtigste in seinem Leben spricht, nämlich Schreiben. Und darin wird King zu einem Menschen, den man nur bewundern kann - seine Ehrlichkeit, die Tiefe seiner Gefühle und die klugen Einsichten in den menschlichen Charakter verdienen Hochachtung. Da wird klar, weshalb sich so viele Leser von seinen Romanen angesprochen fühlen!Als Hörbuch ist On Writing sensationell: Stephen King liest es selbst, und er erweist sich (wie schon bei Bag of Bones) als begnadeter Erzähler - immerhin erzählt er ja sein eigenes Leben!Fazit: Stephen King zeigt hier, dass er einer der großartigsten zeitgenössischen Erzähler ist, auch wenn der akademische Literaturbetrieb in Deutschland hochnäsigerweise noch weit von dieser Erkenntnis entfernt ist ,-)6 Sterne.

Klasse Buch - Mehr kann ich eigentlich gar nicht sagen. Es ist wirklich JEDE Frage, die man zum Thema Schreiben haben könnte, inn diesem Buch beantwortet, und zwar präzise und so konkret und einfach wie möglich.Hat wirklich Spaß gemacht.Im ersten Teil ist auch noch ein bisschen von Mr Kings Lebenslauf drin, der-obwohl ich es nicht gedacht hätte-genauso spannend ist wie das eigentliche Thema des Buches.

Will the real Stephen King stand up? - This was money well spent. This book is more than the title implies. First it is a selected biography of Stephen King. I enjoyed the poison ivy episode. This is not a deviation but an explanation of why he writes the way he does and the background that he draws on. Secondly this is a how to write like Stephen King book it reflects his likes and dislikes. I agree with most of them. I suppose that that is why I like his novels.However I can only guess that he must spend a lot of time around people that cuss. It is not like he is not aware of it. I feel that he is somewhat proud of the fact that he cusses a lot. Luckily he said it is not necessity to be excessive.I share his dislike for flashbacks. And he also expresses several dislikes for other stilting crutches, including excessive description of Back-story. An added bonus is his description of the van accident that a certain comedian commented about saying that Stephen lost his Tommyknockers. Stephen forgot to mention that he bought the van that hit him for destruction purposes. Talk about revenge.Over all after reading this I was compelled to try my hand at writing.

So viel Spaß sollte Lesen immer machen! - Ich habe das Buch gekauft, weil ich Stephen King s Bücher schon immer faszinierend fand. Ich konnte sie nur meistens nicht lesen. Dafür habe ich mich viel zu sehr gefürchtet. An Einschlafen war nächtelang nicht mehr zu denken. Im Moment schreibe ich selbst an einem Buch. Also dachte ich, ON WRITING wird mir vielleicht ein paar Tips geben. Und in der Tat - ich fühle mich sehr inspiriert und finde das Buch ganz hervorragend. Stephen erzählt von sich und ich höre ihm mit wachsender Begeisterung zu. Ich bin sehr froh, daß ich dieses Buch gekauft habe.




On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft