We went to Barnes and Noble, had coffee, talked about writing, and looked at writing books. I bought a stack of books about writing exercises, motivation to write, etc etc. Jeremy pointed out On Writing by Stephen King and recommended it. I had my doubts about Mr. King, but none about my friend, so I bought the book.

I picked up Eyes of the Dragon when I was about ten, and ploughed through King’s work over the next few years. I read the uncut Stand in five days. I loved The Long Walk. I made the egregious miscalculation of reading IT when I was babysitting late at night and was a nervous wreck by the time the parents got home. I read Pet Sematary at least ten times.

He lost me when I was in my early twenties. Perhaps his writing changed, perhaps my taste changed – probably a little of both.  At World Fantasy Con 2005, I told a bookseller that I’d buy any one book he recommended. He asked me carefully about my taste and recommended The Gunslinger, even though I’d told him I didn’t like King. He said it was a very different book, and highly recommended it.

I bought it. I began it. I threw it across the room around page 6. The Kingian stylistic elements that stuck in my craw were still present, and I wanted no part of it. I won’t get into specifics – I’m not really interested in bitching about technique, and my quibbles are subjective. I say this to illustrate how significant it is that he won me over. It’s a lot harder to win someone back than it is to catch their eye the first time.

In the past two years, I’ve become very conscious of having a practice. I have a writing practice, a dance practice, and a yoga practice – which are all part of the same thing to me, but that’s another post. Stephen King writes brilliantly about the importance – and the art – of having a practice. This applies to dancers, painters, martial artists, seamstresses…. anyone who has or needs a practice. I happened to pick up the book at the right time, and it resonated with me in a profound way. He also writes brilliantly about passive voice, which is one of my all-time pet peeves.

I have included a few paragraphs that really struck me as I read this book. Reading these won’t replace reading the book, so I hope they will inspire you to get On Writing. It’s worth every penny.

Thank you, Jeremy Wagner & Stephen King. You’re both in my top eight 4evr.

“The idea that creative endeavor and mid-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time. The four twentieth-century writers whose work is most responsible for it are probably Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson, and the poet Dylan Thomas. They are writers who largely formed our vision of an existential English-speaking wasteland where people have been cut off from one another and live in an atmosphere of emotional strangulation and despair. These concepts are very familiar to most alcoholics; the common reaction to them is amusement. Substance-abusing writers are just substance abusers—common garden-variety drunks and druggies, in other words. Any claims that the drugs and alcohol are necessary to dull finer sensibility are just the usual self-serving bullshit. I’ve heard alcoholic snowplow drivers make the same claim, that they drink to still the demons. It doesn’t’ matter if you’re James Jones,  John Cheever, or a stewbum snoozing in Penn Station; for an addict, the right to the drink or drug of choice must be preserved at all costs. Hemingway and Fitzgerald didn’t drink because they were creative, alienated, or morally weak. They drank because it’s what alkies are wired up to do. Creative people probably do run a greater risk of alcoholism and addiction than those in other jobs, but so what? We all look pretty much the same when we’re puking in the gutter.”

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“Messrs. Strunk and White don’t speculate as to why so many writers are attracted to passive verbs, but I’m willing to; I think timid writers like them for the same reason timid lovers like passive partners. The passive voice is safe. There is no troublesome action to contend with; the subject just has to close its eyes and think of England…. I think unsure writers also feel the passive voice somehow lends their work authority, perhaps even a quality of majesty. If you find instruction manuals and lawyers’ torts majestic, I guess it does.

“The timid fellow writes, The meeting will be held at seven o’clock because that somehow says to him, “Put it this way and people will believe you really know.” Purge this quisling thought! Don’t be a muggle! Throw back your shoulders, stick out your chin, and put that meeting in charge! Write The meeting’s at seven. There, by God! Don’t you feel better?

“I won’t say there’s no place for the passive tense. Suppose, for instance, a fellow dies in the kitchen but ends up somewhere else. The body was carried from the kitchen and placed in the parlor is a fair way to put this, although ‘was carried’ and ‘was placed’ still irk the shit out of me. I accept them but I don’t embrace them. What I would embrace is Freddy and Myra carried the body out of the kitchen and laid it on the parlor sofa. Why does the body have to be the subject of the sentence, anyway? It’s dead, for Christ’s sake! Fuhgeddaboudit! ”

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“The most important things to remember about backstory are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting. Stick to the parts that are, and don’t get carried away with the rest. Long life stories are best received in bars, and only then an hour or so before closing time, and if you are buying.”

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“At times like that I’m sure all writers feel pretty much the same, no matter what their skill and success level: God, if only I were in the right writing environment, with the right understanding people, I just KNOW I would be penning my masterpiece.

“In truth, I’ve found that any day’s routine interruptions and distractions don’t much hurt a work in progress and may actually help it in some ways. It is, after all, the dab of grit that seeps into an oyster’s shell that makes the pearl, not pearl-making seminars with other oysters.”

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“… if you don’t want to work your ass off, you have no business trying to write well—settle back into competency and be grateful you have even that much to fall back on. There is a muse, but he’s not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust all over your typewriter or computer station. He lives in the ground. He’s a basement guy. You have to descend to his level, and once you get down there you have to furnish an apartment for him to live in. You have to do all the grunt labor, in other words, while the muse sits and smokes cigars and admires his bowling trophies and pretends to ignore you. Do you think this is fair? I think it’s fair. He may not be much to look at, that muse-guy, and he may not be much of a conversationalist (what I get out of mine is mostly surly grunts, unless he’s on duty), but he’s got that inspiration. It’s right that you should do all the work and burn all the midnight oil, because the guy with the cigar and the little wings has got a bag of magic. There’s stuff in there that can change your life.”

“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. Don’t wait for the muse. As I’ve said, he’s a hardheaded guy who’s not susceptible to a lot of creative fluttering. This isn’t the Ouija board or the spirit-world we’re talking about here, but just another job like laying pipe or driving long-haul trucks. Your job is to make sure the muse knows where you’re going to be every day from nine ’til noon or seven ’til three.  If he does know, I assure you that sooner or later he’ll start showing up, chomping his cigar and making his magic.”