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marindamisra 's review for:
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
by Stephen King
I read a book! Well listened to one. This one had been on my radar for a while. I haven’t read any of his books and I’m not really planning to, but I knew he was a discovery writer too and wanted to hear what he had to say. Clearly someone so insanely successful must have something helpful to say.
“But you don’t listen to books! You actively advocate against it!” Well yes USUALLY I do, but this is narrated by Stephen King and I had this magical idea that it would be like sitting down with him and talking about writing.
Thoughts on this decision? I’m glad I listened to it but I’m still going to be needing a hard copy because when he got into the craft part, man, I need to see those sentences he’s ripping apart. I enjoyed the autobiographical parts (which is funny because in the forward he said this wasn’t an autobiography and then he spends hours doing just that) but what I got this book for was, like I said, the craft stuff.
And I was not disappointed. I felt like I was just skimming along learning about his drug addiction when he comes up behind me, grabs my head and dunks it underwater and suddenly we’re talking about grammar. This is something that was awesome and unique to this book, other books and classes from Scott Card and Sanderson cover really great over arching story stuff, but no one has dug into the nuts and bolts like this and honestly that is what I need right now.
I’m working with my own agent on my book and she just casually mentioned that I keep dropping into the passive voice. I tried not to panic, because I know the passive voice is BAD, but I have never actually taken a class in writing before so I don’t actually know how to spot it let alone fix it. So having him go into these mechanics was amazing.
Anyways, yes read this book, it’s great and I’ll probably end up buying it. If anything I’ll get it from the library. But tomorrow. Tonight I have edits to make!
“But you don’t listen to books! You actively advocate against it!” Well yes USUALLY I do, but this is narrated by Stephen King and I had this magical idea that it would be like sitting down with him and talking about writing.
Thoughts on this decision? I’m glad I listened to it but I’m still going to be needing a hard copy because when he got into the craft part, man, I need to see those sentences he’s ripping apart. I enjoyed the autobiographical parts (which is funny because in the forward he said this wasn’t an autobiography and then he spends hours doing just that) but what I got this book for was, like I said, the craft stuff.
And I was not disappointed. I felt like I was just skimming along learning about his drug addiction when he comes up behind me, grabs my head and dunks it underwater and suddenly we’re talking about grammar. This is something that was awesome and unique to this book, other books and classes from Scott Card and Sanderson cover really great over arching story stuff, but no one has dug into the nuts and bolts like this and honestly that is what I need right now.
I’m working with my own agent on my book and she just casually mentioned that I keep dropping into the passive voice. I tried not to panic, because I know the passive voice is BAD, but I have never actually taken a class in writing before so I don’t actually know how to spot it let alone fix it. So having him go into these mechanics was amazing.
Anyways, yes read this book, it’s great and I’ll probably end up buying it. If anything I’ll get it from the library. But tomorrow. Tonight I have edits to make!