King On Writing

The novel, “On Writing” by Stephen King is divided into 3 main sections and a post-reading section. The novel starts off with King problematizing the actual purpose of the book to the books audience. He uses very informal language in this section and throughout the novel as a whole. This language includes speaking to his audience directly, asking them questions and to even perform tasks, and informal phrases including swearing. He ultimately tells the readers that this book is not an autobiography or the end-all-be-all of writing rules. Rather it is his story of how he, as a writer, was formed. The first section following those forwards, discusses many incidents from his childhood. King grew up in a rather unstable environment frequently moving
At his lowest point, his wife even hosted an intervention for him and threatened to leave and take the kids with her if he didn’t quit drinking. He did and bought a real desk, signifying the beginning of his new healthier life. The next section of the book described what writing means to King. He explained how to him, writing is the most real form of telepathy in life. He explained writings amazing power to transmit ideas throughout time without directly speaking or seeing the same things ergo a form of telepathy. King takes writing very seriously and he hopes the audience reading his book do too if they wish to continue reading. The next section is about a toolbox both literally and figuratively. King describes and talks about a toolbox that was made by his grandfather and passed down to his uncle to carry all of his important tools and how the most used and important ones were on top. He tells of a story when one day he only needed one tool to fix a hole in a screen but he lugged over the whole heavy box anyway and learned the importance of planning for the unexpected just in case. He relates the toolbox to a writer’s figurative toolbox in which they use different writing tools to create the best
The following section gets into the real nity-gritty of his writing tips and tricks. He beings by stating right away that a bad writer cannot be a good writer. That a good writer cannot be a great writer (himself included), but that a decent writer could be a good writer. Having established that, King uses the rest of the book to provide tips and textual examples to support his tips to his audience. Kings tips include reading and writing as much as possible to learn. If you do that, writing classes or seminars are really not even fully needed unless you do them for enjoyment. He explains how writing shouldn’t even feel like work if you really have a passion. He talks about after completing a draft of a book the need to put it aside for at least 6 weeks and to do a new activity. He explains that the completed first draft should be entirely the authors ideas and that it should be written in a room with the door closed so no ones thoughts can penetrate you own, because they will later. He talks about the need to find a decent writing-loving editor and agent once you get to that level and start making a