On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft by Stephen King

“If you feel you need permission to do all the reading and writing your little hearts desires, however, consider it hereby granted by yours truly.

Cheers for that!

‘Good’ books about writing are not easy to find. Too often, the writer comes across as being rather (which is British for extremely) condescending. Their tips and advice brim with their own superiority. Stephen King instead is just plain honest: he tells you what he believes and shows us why he believes that. If he says writing this way is bad, he shows us why it is bad. And he knows that we, the readers, will understand him. He assumes that we are intelligent or clever enough to understand him. He says things as they are, and I loved him for that.
Moments of his private life and amusing literary-related anecdotes pepper On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. so that I was always entertained (then again, I would probably find King’s shopping list interesting so…). It has do, funnily enough, with King’s writing, especially the way in which he tells a story. Wherever fiction or not, his words hold my attention. There is a fluidity in his style that makes anything he writes a pleasure to read, and in this case, he also gives ‘aspiring’ (he would probably wouldn’t like the term but…) writers solid and useful advice as to improve their own writing.

My rating: 5 stars

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