kristin724 said:
Hi all.
Anybody know where I can shop a 1k review of Stephen King's On Writing? I thought this was the best place to post, but feel free to move if need be.
What did yall think of it? I was a little less than impressed.
I prefer King's non-fiction to his fiction, mainly because I've watched the same movies, read the same pulpy horror, and have a huge DVD/book collection with the same stuff. He's even watched Andy Milligan movies.
I'm not a big fan of King's recent fiction work myself (From a Buick 8 started brilliantly, but quickly got very boring.), although I do occasionally read his short stories and earlier stuff, but I enjoyed this book a lot, and could relate to most of it. King puts on loud music to write to; I find that music with lyrics is too distracting and puts me in "song writing" mode. I prefer to listen to some fast jazz fusion (Soft Machine, Ian Carr, Miles Davis, Mahavishnu Orchestra) or slower paced jazz trios such as EST (Esbjorn Svenson Trio).
However, the best thing about it was his "daily word limit." I tried this once and set a limit of 2K words a day. I almost killed myself, but wrote a 100,000 word novel in a month - and it all began from a simple idea and a first chapter. (Most of was written under the influence of Deep Purple & Marillion & Rush - I don't even like Deep Purple much, but the lyrics were rubbish & the songs fast moving. It was after that I switched to Jazz - although I find some of the more mellow British folk singers like Cara Dillon, Show of Hands, etc) are good to write to.
I didn't learn a great deal from it, but did feel it was something I could relate to very strongly - almost like having a buddy who understands what it's like to be grabbed by the "bug" of writing. Both this and Danse Macabre are the only two King books I've ever re-read. Good stuff. Why were you unimpressed with it?