Sticky Points

I am reading Stephen King's On Writing, a book my aunt and uncle bought me ages ago. I think I received it my freshman year in college ... ten years later and I am just now getting around to it - provoked by another writer saying it's one of the only writing books worth reading.

Of course, Strunk & White is on that list. (as it should be) I would also add Brenda Ueland's If You Want to Write and Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones. I've come across a few other good ones, but The Good Books on writing isn't what this post is about.

NaNoWriMo is on track. Barely. I can't seem to do more than the minimum number of words nowadays, but I'm keeping up. The story is spinning off into characters and ideas and landscapes that I never imagined, and that gets harder to do. Every once in a while I'll have a couple hundred words escape from me easily, but then I spent a thousand more making myself sit down and type. Type ANYTHING remotely related to the story. Last night, I wrote a lot of dialogue - not even attributed to a character in particular, just conversations that will need to happen between two people at some point in the novel.

I like Stephen King's books, but I've never been " a fan." I have a whole new respect for him. Popular and prolific writers often get a bad rap, like they don't have real talent, like they got a lucky break. King's story is Every Writer's story. He worked hard, he raised children, he was dead broke at many points. Unlike many of his stories, he didn't even ENJOY writing Carrie (his first novel). It was HARD for him. He offers this advice:

The most important [thing learned from Carrie] is that the writer's original perception of a character or characters may be as erroneous as the reader's. Running a close second was the realization that stopping a piece of work because it's hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.

There are lots of other golden nuggets in there. I'm not even done yet, and I find On Writing invaluable.

Life isn't a support-system for art. It's the other way around.