#Why u doing this to me the other one has a shorter and easier ule | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

jackybooks · 6 years ago

Text

Stephen King - On Writing | A Memoir on the Craft

I believe large numbers of people have at least some talent as writers and storytellers, and that those talents can be strengthened and sharpened. If I didn’t believe that, writing a book like this would be a waste of time

V.C.

There were more doors than one person could ever open in a lifetime, I thought (and still think) - “endless possibilities of life”

By the time I was fourteen, the nail in my wall would no longer support the height of the rejection slips impaled upon it, I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing.

I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction and poetry who has ever published a line has been accused of someone of wasting his or her god-given talent. if you write(or paint/dance/sculpt/sing), someone will make you feel lousy about it, that’s all.

Mindset of writing

If stone sober people can fuck like they’re out of their minds - can actually be out of their minds while caught in that throe - why shouldn’t writers be able to go bonkers and still stay sane.

Writing is a lonely job, having someone who believes in you makes a lot of difference. They don’t have to make speeches, just believing is usually enough.

Stopping a piece of your work just because it’s hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don’t feel like it, and sometimes you’re doing good work when it feels like all you’re managing is to shovel shit in a sitting position.

I’m convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing

Toolbox

Vocabulary

It ain’t how much you got, honey, its how you use it.

Put your vocabulary on the top shelf, and don’t make any conscious effort to improve it.

Use the first word that comes to mind, if it’s appropriate and colorful.

Concision

"My first kiss will always be recalled by me as how my romance with Shayna was begun"

"My romance with Shayna began with our first kiss. I'll never forget it”

You might also notice how much simpler the thought is to understand when it's broken up into two thoughts. This makes matters easier for the reader, and the reader must always be your main concern;

Adverbs

To write adverbs is human, to write he said or she said is divine.

On Writing

Good writing consist of mastering the fundamentals (vocabulary, grammar, the elements of style)

Reading

To be a good writer, you must read a lot and write a lot. You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by force of your writing until it has been done to you. If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have time(or the tools) to write, simple as that.

The real importance of reading is it created an ease and intimacy with the process of writing; one comes to the country of the writer with one’s papers and identification pretty much in order.

Once weaned for the ephemeral craving for TV, most people will find they enjoy the time they spend reading. I’d like to suggest that turning off that endlessly quacking box is apt to improve the quality of your life as well as the quality of your writing.

We read to experience the mediocre and the outright rotten; such experience helps us recognize those things when they begin to creep into our own work, and to steer clear of them.

You learn the best by reading a lot and writing a lot, and the most valuable lessons of all are the ones you teach yourself.

You must begin by being your biggest advocate, which means reading the magazines and publishing the kind of stuff you write.

Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open

When you write, you want to get rid of the world, do you not? Of course you do, when you’re writing, you’re creating your own worlds.

Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and get it right - as right as you can, anyway - it belongs to anyone who reads it.

The place can be humble(probably should be. and it really one u needs one thing: a door which you are willing to shut. The closed door is your day of telling the world you mean business; you have made a serious commitment to write and intend to walk the walk as well as talk the talk.

But you need the room, you need the door, and you need the determination to shut the door. You need a concrete goal, as well. The longer you keep to these basics, the easier the act of writing will become.

If you're a beginner though, let me urge that you take your story through at least 2 drafts; the one with the door closed, the one you do with it open…

Keep the door closed

There comes a point when you want to show what you're doing to a close friend, either because you're proud of what you're doing or because you're doubtful about it. My best advice is to resist this impulse. Keep the pressure one; don't lower it by exposing what you've written to the doubt, the praise, or even the well-meaning questions of someone from the Outside World. Let your hope of success(and your fear of failure) carry you on, difficult as that can be. There'll be time to show off what you've done when you finish... but even after finishing I think you must be cautious and give yourself a chance to think while the story is still like a field of freshly fallen snow, absent of any tracks save your own.

Here's something else - if no ones says yo you, this is wonderful! you are a lot less apt to slack off or to start concentrating on the wrong thing.. being wonderful, for instance, instead of telling the goddam story.

You've done a lot of work and you need a period of time to rest. Your mind and imagination - two things which are related, but not really the same - have to recycle themselves. My advice is you take a couple days off - go fishing, and then work on something else, something shorter, preferably and something that's a complete changer directions and pace from your newly finished book.

Resist temptation, you'll very likely decide you didn't do as well on that passage as you thought and you'd better retool it on the spot. This is bad. The only thing worse would be for you to decide the passage is even better than you remembered - why not drop everything and read the whole book over right then? Get back to work on it! Hell, you're ready! You're fuckin Shakespeare!

After 6 weeks - Revising/Rewriting

If you've never done it before, you'll find reading your book over after a six week layoff to be a strange, often exhilarating experience, It's yours, you'll recognize it as yours, even be able to remember what tune was on the stereo when you wrote certain lines, and yet it will also be like reading the work of someone else, a soul-twin, perhaps. This is the way it should be, the reason you waited. It's always easier to kill someone else's darlings than it is to kill your own.

With 6 weeks of time, you'll also be able to see nay glaring holes in the plot of character development. I'm talking about holes big enough to drive a truck through. And listen, if you spot a few of these big holes, you are forbidden to feel depressed about them or beat up on yourself. Screw-ups happen to the best of us,

When reading your own draft - only god gets it right the first time and only a slob says "oh well, let it go, that's what copyeditors are for”

I love this part of the process because I'm re-discoverying my own book, and usually liking it.

Underneath, I'm asking myself the big question: Is this story coherent? What I want most of all is resonance, something that will linger for a little while in Constant Reader's mind and heart.

Most of all, I'm looking for what I meant.

The forumla for revision

2nd draft = 1st draft - 10%

When to open the door

Someone once said - All novels are really letters aimed at one person. At various points, the author is thinking, "I wonder what he/she will think when he/she reads this part?"

And if what you hear makes sense, then you make the changes. You can't let the whole world into your story, but you can let in the ones that matter the most. And you should.

Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scrubber's heart, kill your darlings

What to write about

The big question - what are you going to write about? And the equally big answer, Anything you damn well want. Anything at all, as long as you tell the truth.

What would be very wrong, I think, is to turn away form what you know and like or love, in favor of things you believe will impress your friends, relatives, and writing circle colleagues.

When I'm asked why I decided to write the sort of thing I do write, I always think the question is more revealing than any answer I can possibly give. Wrapped within it, like the chewy stuff in the center of a Tootsie Pop, is the assumption that the writer controls the material instead to the other way around. "The book is the boss”

What you know makes you unique in some other way. Be brave.

If you’re a lawyer, your story about lets say lawyers & gangs whatever will be very good because its grounded on experience and truth.

Structures of Writing

Stories and novels consist of 3 parts - Narration, Description and Dialogue.

Narration Moves the story from point A to B, and finally point Z

Description Creates a sense of reality for the reader.

Small example -

The cab pulled up in front of Palm Too at quarter to four on a bright summer afternoon. Billy paid the driver, stepped out onto the sidewalk, and took a quick look around for Martin. Not in sight. Satisfied, Billy went inside.

After the hot clarity of Second Avenue, Palm Too was as dark as a cave. The backbar mirror picked up some of the street-glare and glimmered in the gloom like a mirage. For a moment it was all Billy could see, and then his eyes began to adjust. There were a few solitary drinkers at the bar. beyond them, the matire d’, his tie undone and his shirt cuffs rolled back to show his hairy wrists, was talking with the bartender. There was still sawdust sprinkled on the floor, Billy noted, as if this were a twenties speakeasy instead of a millennium eatery where you couldn’t smoke, let alone spit a gob of tobacco between your feet. And the cartoons dancing across the walls - gossip-column caricatures of downtown political hustlers, newsmen who had long since retired or drunk themselves to death, celebrities you couldn’t recognize - still gambolled all the way to the ceiling. The air was redolent of steak and fried onions. All of it the same as it ever was

The maitre d’ stepped forward. “Can I help you, sir?” We don’t open for dinner until six, but the bar -

“I’m looking for Richie Martin,” Billy said.

If you want to be a successful writer, you must be able to describe it, and in a way that will cause your reader to pickle with recognition. When it's on target, a smile delights us in much the same way meeting an old friend in a crowd of strangers does. By comparing two seemingly unrelated objects - a restaurant bar and a cave, a mirror and a mirage - we are sometimes able to see an old thing in a new and vivid way.

Practice the art, always reminding yourself that your job is to say what you see, and then to get on with your story.

Dialogue What brings the characters to life through their speech

And the cardinal rules of good fiction is never tell us a thing if you can show us, instead. "Annie seems particularly happy that day" If I have to tell you, I lose.

Dialogue is a skill best learned by people who enjoy talking and listening to others - particularly listening.

Some people don't want to hear the truth, of course, but that's not your problem. If you expect it to ring true, then you must talk yourself. Even more important, you must shut up and listen to others talk

I think the best stories always end up being about the people rather than the event, which is to say character-driven.

Every character you create, is partly you.

Practice is invaluable(and should feel good, really not like practice at all) and that honesty is indispensable. Skills in description, dialogue and character development all boil down to seeing or hearing clearly and then transcribing what you see or hear with equal clarity.

Good fiction always begins with story and progresses to them it almost never begins with theme and progresses to story.

~~Plot?~~ I won't try to convince you I never plotted like I never told a lie, but I do both as infrequently as possible. I distrust plot for 2 reasons.

Because of our lives are largely plotless, even when you add in all our reasonable precautions and careful planning;

I believe plotting and the spontaneity of real creation aren't compatible.

My basic belief about the making of stories is that they are pretty much make themselves. The job of the writer is to give them a place to grow.

Plot, I think, the good writer's last resort and dullard's first choice. The story which results form it is apt to feel artificial and labored. I never demand a set of characters that they do things my way. On the contrary, I want them to do things their way

Most of the ideas come from "situations" - what if vampires did this what if what if

these are all situations which occurred to me - while showing, while driving, while taking my daily walk

I believe stories are found things, like fossils in the ground, he said that he didn’t believe me. I said that’s fine, as long as he believe that I believe it. Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world. The writers job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as possible.

Why Write

I did it for the buzz, I did the for the pure joy of the thing, and if you can do it for joy, you can do it forever

Writing did not save my life - but it has continued to do what it always has done: it makes may life a brighter and more pleasant place.

Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends, In the end, it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.

The rest of it - and perhaps the best of it - is a permission slip: you can, you should, and if you're brave enough to start, you will. Writing is magic, as much as the water of life as any other creative art, The water is free, So drink, drink and be filled up

Talent renders the whole idea of rehearsal meaningless; when you find something at which you are talented, you do it(whatever it is) until your fingers bleed or your eyes are ready to fall out of your head. Even when no one is listening(or reading/watching), every outing is bravado performance, because you as the creator are happy.

If God gives you something you can do, why in God’s name wouldn’t you do it.

Quotes [No theme]

"there's just enough of me left inside to know that I am globally, perhaps even galactically, fucked up.”

"and telling an alcoholic to control his drinking is like telling a guy suffering the world's most cataclysmic case of diarrhea to control his shitting”

The work starts to feel like work, and for most writers that is the smooch of death. Writing is at its best - always, always, always - when it is a kind of inspired play for the writer. I can write in cold blood if I have to, but I like it best when its fresh and almost too hot to handle.

Remember you are writing a novel, not a research paper, the story always comes first.

It seems to occur to few of the attendees that if you have a feeling you just can't describe, you might just be, I don't know, kind of like, my sense of it is, maybe in the wrong fucking class.

“One word at a time”

0 notes