Review of Stephen King's On Writing


The widely-reported accident, in which Stephen King was almost killed by a drunk driver in a van, took place in 1999 during the writing of this book. Which lends a sudden, but crucial, preciousness - even urgency - to its content and message.

On Writing is King's second non-fiction work since Danse Macabre, his earlier ruminations on the world of horror and its influence upon his work.

Possibly the best-selling and most prolific author in the horror genre, he is well-known for spine-chilling novels like Carrie, It, The Stand and The Green Mile, which was turned into a film starring Tom Hanks.

It is inevitable that King turned to writing seriously about his own life and craft.

This is really two books in one. The first portion deals with the author's memories of his adolescence and eventful experiences during his college days.

He talks about raising his family in a trailer and reveals the struggles and difficulties he and his wife, writer Tabitha King, had to endure before the publication of Carrie.

This part is insightful, funny and alive with anecdotes. For example, how his alcoholic and cocaine-addictions led to the idea for The Shining - the terrifying story of a man who loses his mind in a haunted hotel. This was made into breathtaking film by Stanley Kubrick.

Or how he started composing Misery in a London hotel at the very desk Rudyard Kipling had died writing.

Fans of the author will be enthralled by revelations, like how Carrie came to King's mind when he was a janitor cleaning the high school girls' locker room, or how the author had been too drunk when he wrote Cujo to ever remember writing it.

As a memoir, the accounts and terrifically engaging as King veers from an impoverished childhood to satirical descriptions of babysitters and schoolmarms, to discussions on his battle with drugs and alcohol.

It is an engrossing and enlightening look into how such an accummulation of events have shaped not just the writer's perspective on life, but also his writing.

The second part of the book is similar to a beginner's guide to writing, a collection of candid advice and suggestions for burgeoning writers, replete with writing assignments, instructions on plot development, how to edit and how to paragraph effectively.

He insists on the importance of nonstop reading and writing. Recommendations extend also to proper work habits, financial advice, as well as how to handle rejections. He even evokes the styles of a melange of famous writers from Ernest Hemingway to John Grisham as part of his writing lesson.

Readers of his work would be able to recognise King's highlighting of character development in his own novels, a strategy that aims to emphasise the human element and the psychological impetus of characters in his story.

This is King's trademark technique, which sets his books apart, in their dramatic and moving power, from other writers in the genre.

Sensitive, gregarious, humorously-crude, but always undeniably honest, the book speaks in the same, richly conversational style King has long been known for in his own novels and short stories, providing for a hearfelt read.

Near the end, King talks about how the need to keep on writing pulled him back to life after the accident.

It is a profoundly poignant account that points toward the link between writing and living, as this book spiritedly evinces in its accounts of both, and stresses - for King and for any true writer - how one cannot survive without the other.

Published in The Straits Times, Life! on 18 Nov 2000