Response to On Writing, by Stephen King

Stephen King has been good early morning company.
For years, I meant to read, On Writing, but only ever skimmed it from time to time; maybe I was afraid of the part where he writes about his car accident, which I’d heard a lot about.
His opinions are strong and get me thinking:
If you don't read a lot then you're not going to be a writer, that's that.  If you don't talk to people and listen to others talk, then good luck writing dialogue.  Characters drive the story.  Plotting stories is for chumps.  Read, read, read.  Write, write, write.  Adverbs are your enemy.  Be clear, write what is true, story story story -- keep things moving.  Don't write in a passive tense.  Our troops defeated the enemy becomes the weaker: The enemy was defeated by our troops.  (Not his example, I can't remember his right now.)
The passive tense is for passive writers.
Drinking and drugs are not the answer, and I don't think he remembers writing Cujo.
He was pretty drunk for Misery but had great fun writing it.  He started it because of a dream he had during a flight to London. King wrote in the hotel at Rudyard Kipling's desk, sixteen pages on a yellow legal pad. 
I thought of this part of the book last week when I came home and quickly wrote down the basic outline of a story I heard during the day; I didn’t want the feeling of it to slip away.  I think of many of the anecdotes King shared, throughout my days — almost like they had been conversations with an insightful, generous friend.

Don't trust pronouns.  King cuts as many as possible in his second draft of a novel.  He says to write that first draft fast and furiously, keeping it to yourself -- writing with the door closed.  Self doubt can be a killer so just keep going.  After it's done he says there should be a minimum of a six week waiting period before looking at it for revisions and a second draft.  After the six weeks, that's when the door can open for sharing.
King’s editing set up sounds clean:  first draft, a legal pad, and writing utensils.  He used an example of a character stealing a few dollars from someone early in a story.  The note in the legal pad read something like: Amy would never steal money. Change this!  p. 91
Then, in the manuscript, he marks the spot in question with a bold note, knowing that if he makes that kind of mark he can always refer to his notes if needed.  This type of concrete explanation is comforting to me; he just sits down and does the work.  We all have to sit down and do the work.

Themes are not something to be afraid of, daunted by ... but the story should come out first and then let the themes emerge, take long walks and think it all over.  Don't sit down and write on a predetermined theme.  He thinks George Orwell even had the story for 1984 before the theme, and plans to ask him about it when he meets him in the ever after.   I’m not sure that Mr. King believes in Heaven or God.  His main themes are: if there is a god why do so many bad things happen?  Good people doing very bad things.  And the violence that runs through human nature.  The main themes of a person's life will be written about over and over again. 
Yes.

We thought a little about writer's block early this morning when I did not want to be on the treadmill or anywhere else.  Five hundred pages into The Stand (which I have not read) he determined that he did not know where to go... Code Red, CODE RED.  If he'd been 200-300 pages in he thinks he would have abandoned ship, but 500 pages was a big investment of time and energy.  He had a lot of characters to deal with and didn't know what to do, how to sort out where the story would go next, so he started to take very long, boring walks, which were very helpful although they didn't solve the problem right off the bat.  It took some weeks of walking.  But then, in a flash, the whole thing came to him.  He went home and wrote one or two pages of notes because he was so afraid of forgetting how it could all unfold.  I sort things out by walking around too; mostly I like quiet roads and lots of trees and moss.  No vans.
It's interesting to read descriptions of how he dealt with the nuts and bolts of certain stories.  It might mean a lot more to me had I read his books, but I love the descriptions anyway.  I love to know the story behind the story.

King says to have an Ideal Reader who you are always imagining as you write.  For S.K. it is his wife, Tabby.
The second draft should be 10% shorter than the first.
Research should stay as far in the background as possible.
Don't bore people with too much back story.  His wife told him not to bore her with what a character did for community service in the year he spent with writer's block.  He cut 2-3 pages down to a paragraph; no one cares about those details.  He watches to see when his wife will put the manuscript down.  He waits for the laughs, he watches her while she reads sometimes and she tells him he's needy.  He says writers are needy between the first and second draft.

Writing Retreats and Writing Classes
He thinks the retreat sounds like a great fantasy -- someone silently leaving a boxed lunch at your cabin door every day so that your creative process won't be disrupted.  The quiet woods, the gatherings in the evening at the lodge to roast marshmallows and talk about works in progress, other writers offering comments like: I like the use of tone and imagery... I can almost see it, like, you know….
Mr. King firmly believes first drafts need to be written with the door closed (and this retreat business doesn't allow for that) and the feedback might not be so productive anyway.
Writing classes can be good, and especially because a writer can connect with helpful people the way he did in a composition class as a young man.  He quotes a figure of 5% when determining how many writers actually make a living strictly from writing, hence there are a lot of writers out there teaching. Take their classes, learn what you can.
Agents
It's not so impossible to get an agent.
Get The Writer's Market, read the magazines you are submitting to, and write well-crafted letters to potential agents. 

This morning I got to the hardest part of the book for me to read --  about his accident.
The man driving the van was on his way down to the store "to get some of those Marzes-bars."  His dog, Bullet, was after some meat in a cooler which distracted him to the point where he came over a hill driving on the shoulder.  He thought he hit a small deer.  But then there were bloody spectacles on his passenger seat.  Mr. King had been hit and then thrown over the van, landing behind it just shy of a pile of rocks.  The EMTs didn't think he would make it.  One of them said to the driver as they got going in the ambulance, "You better hit it hard," and so they drove 110 mph on back roads to get him to the hospital.  They determined he needed to be life-flighted elsewhere.  His lungs collapsed as they began the flight.  The guy who hit him had another dog at home named, Pistol.  Stephen King was stunned that he had just nearly been killed by one of his own characters.  He wasn't sure he would make it.  He told people, "Tell Tabby I love her."  That made me start to cry.

The surgeon saved him, and his wife saved him ... but writing again helped a lot.  He had things to say, he had to finish this book.

He added in a section showing part of a first draft of a short story.  Then he showed the edits.  He had Strunk in mind.  Cut needless words.  Cut cut cut.  I think of them too — Strunk and White.  In life and in words.  Cut cut cut.
He also provided two big lists of recommended books.  Thank goodness; I love that.  Book recommendations!  Yay!

I still can’t read Carrie.  That would be too scary for me, but finally — I got to hang out and hear what Stephen King has to say.