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
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