I am a simple person. I like that I can walk the labyrinth, read bell hooks, and love Stephen King, all in the same week.
I love mysteries, used to devour them. And his books were the ones I packed into heavy cardboard boxes, lugged down two flights of stairs, and schlepped up another one when I moved out of my apartment of 14 years last December.
When I was checking out creative writing blogs, I ran into a 1988 Stephen King article on del.icio.us. A lot of rivers have been sucked dry since 1988. But you can still find a pool to swim in on his list.
There is more at the link – click and roll down to the bottom of the page for his lively explanations, banterish backup, and the story of how Stephen King learned to write. This is bare bones.
Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully – in Ten Minutes
by Stephen King
1. Be talented
2. Be neat
3. Be self-critical
4. Remove every extraneous word
5. Never look at a reference book while doing a first draft
6. Know the markets
7. Write to entertain
8. Ask yourself frequently, “Am I having fun?”
9. How to evaluate criticism
10. Observe all rules for proper submission
11. An agent? Forget it. For now
12. If it’s bad, kill it
(reprinted in Sylvia K. Burack, ed. The Writer’s Handbook. Boston, MA: Writer, Inc., 1988: 3-9, copyright Stephen King, 1988)
Thursday, March 29th, 2007
My two favorite Stephen King books:
The Shining (red-rum, red-rum)
Carrie
I also saw the one with the foaming-at-the-mouth St. Bernard, and I think I saw the one about a car (named Christine?).
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I loved The Dark Half. And Needful Things, full of dark psychology more than gore. I remember The Dark Half was about an author with an alter ego who wrote his bestselling books. The ones he wrote himself didn’t do well.
The alter ego liked Mirado Black Warrior pencils. I rushed out and bought half a dozen. : – )
Check out MyPencil.com for high quality pencils.
QM
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Oh, my gosh, I just found a review of the Mirado Black Warrior pencil on a blog, Pencil Revolution. A pretty good review, too. Amazing.
Pencil Revolution
QM
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OH, I found a much better link to buy pencils. I don’t know if I ever mentioned, I love the history of pencils. Most other paper products, too. Anyway, check out this link:
Pencil Things
And a good article on pencil collection:
The Pencil Pages
QM
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[…] Black. I posted a link to the bell hooks articles and profile in Shambhala Sun a few weeks ago in 10 Minutes with the King. But I want to repost Building a Community of Love: bell hooks and Thich Nhat Hanh as a separate […]
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Okay–brain sharing confirmed–weird/wierd/wired/odd
I have just read (with awe, excitement, head-nodding, add more adjectives here) Stephen King’s writing rules.
That was one super good bool.
And people used to laugh at me for reading his stuff. Hah.
The guy knows how to write, and his generosity to “the public” seems to be a part of who he has always been.
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I haven’t read his book On Writing (although a writer friend and I coincidentally talked about it last night), but you can’t knock someone who’s made millions through writing. He’s a great storyteller. Red-rum, red-rum…
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I wonder if he’s got any current interviews around the Internet? I haven’t seen much new from him lately. I might have read something that he’s slowed down on the writing. I wonder if that’s true? I’ll have to do a little digging. I like to follow writers’ lives.
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