I’ve almost finished reading Stephen King’s On writing. I love this book. No wonder: it discusses the topic I love reading about—writing, the evolution of a passion, and elements of style—and tells a story with a happy ending.
On Writing is also the story of the support, recognition, and love that are needed to make a writer. Stephen’s mother praises his first story on a big white bunny named Mr. Rabbit Trick:
She said it was good enough to be in a book. Nothing anyone has said to me since has made me feel any happier. I wrote four more stories about Mr. Rabbit. She gave me a quarter a piece for them and sent them around to her four sisters (…). Four stories. A quarter a piece. That was the first buck I made in this business.
King’s wife Tabitha finds the first pages of Carrie in the trash can and convince Stephen to continue to write the novel (even if he “never got to like Carrie White.”)
The next night, when I came home from school, Tabby had the pages. She’d spied them while emptying my wastebasket, had shaken the cigarette ashes off the crumpled balls of paper, smoothed them out, an sat down to read them. She wanted me to go on with it, she said. She wanted to know the rest of the story. (…) “You’ve got something here,” she said. “I really think you do.”
Not everybody was as excited about what he wrote. His middle school teacher, Miss Hisler, wasn’t pleased by Stephen’s movie-to-book version of The pit and the pendulum.
“What I don’t understand, Stevie,” she said, “is why you’d write junk like this in the first place. You’re talented. Why do you want to waste your abilities?” (…) when summer vacation came, I printed four dozen copies of a new story, an original called The Invasion of the Star-Creatures and sold all but four or five. I guess this means I won in the end, at least in a financial sense. But in my hearth I stayed ashamed. I kept hearing Miss Hisler asking why I wanted to waste my talent, why I wanted to waste my time, why I wanted to write junk.
In the end, even if somebody got upset by what he wrote, nobody seemed to have doubted or minimized Stephen King’s talent. Perhaps it was because Stephen King was really good, even then. Perhaps he only perceived the praises and didn’t pay too much attention to the criticism (but the quote above doesn’t quite support this hypothesis). Whatever it was, he was able to feed his believe in himself and to support his motivation to write in spite of the the many pink rejection slips he received and proudly displayed in his room.
How many people does it takes to make a successful writer?, I wonder. How many Stephen Kings did not make it? How many did not have their parent read their first story and laugh “in all the right places”? Or their spouse picking up crumbled pages from the trash can?
How much of one’s success, I wonder, is the effect of individual talent and resilience and how much is the subtle and pervasive net of social support and nurturing? And is it just a case that all the characters in Stephen King’s tale of support and recognition are women?
[Added on 8-20-06]: On re-reading the beginning of On Writing, I noticed that Stephen King expresses doubts that a writer can be made.
I don’t believe writers can be made, either by circumstances or by self-will (although I did believe those things once). The equipment comes with the original package. Yet it is by no means unusual equipment; I believe large numbers of people have at least some talent as writers and story-tellers, and that those talents can be strengthened and sharpened. If I didn’t believe that, writing a book like this would be a waste of time.
King is talking about the talent and the inner drive to express oneself in writing. I agree. But I also believe that people with talent may abandon serious writing and the work necessary to learn the craft; that to make a writer a social network of recognition and support is as necessary as the the talent that comes with the package.
Some people are stronger and more self-assuring than others. Some people need more cheering and support than others. Some people are better than others in creating an supportive environment. But can anybody succeed in a creative career with no social support whatsoever? If the answer is no, than social circumstances can indeed make or break a writer.
Technorati Tags: success, self-esteem, writing, Stephen King, recognition
August 11, 2006
I bought King’s ‘On Writing’ while on a business trip in Baltimore last year an absolutely loved it. It is simply one of the best books on writing that I have read.
August 19, 2006
I think there has to be a net of support and encouragement, unless you have a supremely unshakeable self-confidence (and I haven’t found many writers who don’t or didn’t have at least a narrow streak of low self-confidence running through their character).
My last semester in high school, a teacher trashed my creative writing assignments. My first semester in college, I had a writing teacher (and published short story writer) tell me I would be wasting my talent if I didn’t switch out of Communication & Media Arts into the Writing program immediately. (I did, finally…after she worked on me for 52 weeks.)
I have long-time friends who have never read anything I’ve written for magazines and newspapers, haven’t asked to, haven’t asked what I write about. My father has taken every article I’ve ever had published into work to show his colleagues.
My mother never imposed any “You should do _____ with your life” comments on me, letting me find my own path. But every year for nearly two decades, she gave me blank journals for my birthday and Christmas.
I have talent (so I’ve been told for 20 years) and I have resilience (I’ve supported my life with my writing). But resilience can be tested…and when it is, it’s support and encouragement (past and present) that get you through the rough patches.
Thanks for the post on King’s book. I haven’t read it since the day the hardback version hit bookstores (yes, I was there on new release day). Think I’ll go pull it off the shelf and reacquaint myself with it this weekend.