On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King.

Stephen King On Writing

The book is part memoir and part practical advice to writers. 

The following points are my takeaways from this book on the latter.

  1. The book is an attempt to show how one writer was formed. Not how one writer was made. Stephen doesn’t believe writers can be made, either by circumstances or by self-will. 
    The equipment comes with the original package. Yet it is by no means unusual equipment; large numbers of people have at least some talent as writers and storytellers, and that those talents can be strengthened and sharpened. 

  2. Imitation proceeded creation. As a young kid, Stephen would copy entire comic books word for word. At some point, he began to write his own stories. 
  3. Feedback. When creating his own stories at a young age, he would pass them on to his mother and get feedback from her.
  4.  If you are an aspiring writer, get rid of your television.
  5. Where do ideas come from? There’s no Idea Dump, no Story Central; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. 
    Your job isn’t to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up. 
  6. Get used to rejection, and keep trying. 
  7. When presenting your work, run the extra mile and make it look good. 
  8. When doing your own thing, people may think or say that you are wasting your God-given talent. People will try to make you feel lousy about it. Don’t put too much attention on it. Even if your heart feels ashamed, or if you keep hearing their voices on your head, keep trying. 
  9. Advice from his first editor. John Gould:

    “When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story”. “When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story”

    Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and get it right. It belongs to anyone who wants to read it. Or criticise it.
  10. Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot of difference.
    Stephen’s wife Tabby never voiced a single doubt.
  11. The most important thing that he learned when writing the book Carrie White was 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 realisation that stopping a piece of work just because it’s hard, either emotionally or imaginatively is a bad idea.
  12. The idea that creative endeavour and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time.

    Substance abusing writers are just substance abusers. 

    Any claims that the drugs and alcohol are necessary to dull a finer sensibility are just the usual self-serving bullshit.  
  13. You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair – the sense that you can never completely put on the page what’s in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with four fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page. 
  14. To write to your best abilities, it behoves you to construct your own toolbox and then build up enough muscle so you can carry it with you. 

    Common tools go on top. The commonest of all, the bread of writing, is vocabulary. 

    Put your vocabulary on the top shelf of your toolbox, and don’t make any conscious effort to improve it. One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you’re maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones.
  15. Remember that the basic rule of vocabulary is “use the first word that comes to your mind, if it is appropriate and colourful. 
  16. You’ll also want grammar on top shelf of your toolbox. 
  17. Grammar is not just a pain in the ass; it’s the pole you grab to get your thoughts up on their feet and walking. 
  18. Fear is at the root of most bad writing. 
    Good writing is often about letting go of fear and affectation. 
  19. Writing is refined thinking. Writing is seduction. 
  20. You will build a paragraph at a time, constructing these of your vocabulary and your knowledge of grammar and basic style. 
  21. Good writing consists of mastering the fundamentals – vocabulary, grammar, the elements of style.
  22. If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others; read a lot and write a lot. 
  23. It’s hard for me (Stephen King) to believe that people who read very little (or not at all in some cases) should presume to write and expect people to like what they have written, but I know it’s true.
  24. By the time you step into your new writing space, you should have settled on a daily writing goal. As with physical exercise, it would be best to set this goal low at first. Also, suggest that you take one day a week off. 
  25. What are you going to write about? And the equally big answer: Anything you damn well want. Anything at all … as long as you tell the truth. 
  26. Write what you like, then imbue it with life and make it unique by blending your own personal knowledge of life, friendship, relationships, sex and work. Especially work. People love to read about work.

    What you need to remember is that there’s a difference between lecturing about what you know and using it to enrich the story. The latter is good. The former is not. 
  27. There is a huge difference between story and plot. Story is honourable and trustworthy; plot is shifty, and best kept under house arrest.
  28. Honesty in storytelling makes up for a great many stylistic faults.
  29. Description is what makes the reader a sensory participant in the story. Good description is a learned skill.

    You can learn only by doing. 
  30. Description begins with visualisation of what it is you want the reader to experience. 
  31. The key to good description begins with clear seeing and ends with clear writing, the kind of writing that employs fresh images and simple vocabulary. 

    Practice the art, always reminding yourself that your job is to say what you see, and then get on with yout story.
  32. Dialogue is a skill best learned by people who enjoy talking and listening to others – particularly listening, picking up the accents, rhythms, dialect and slang of various groups. 
  33. The key to writing good dialogue is honesty. And if you are honest about the words coming out of your characters’ mouth, you’ll find that you’ve let yourself in for a fair amount of criticism.
  34. The best stories always end up being about people rather than the event, which is to say character-driven. Once you get beyond the short story (two to four thousand words, let’s say), the story should always be the boss. 
  35. Good fiction always begins with story and progresses to theme.
  36. About revising your work – if you are a beginner, let me urge you that you take your story through at least two drafts. 
  37. The most glaring errors I find on the re-read have to do with character motivation.

    Underneath, however, I’m always asking myself the Big Questions. The biggest: Is this story coherent? 
  38. Each story should be allowed to unfold at its own pace, and that pace is not always double time. Nevertheless, you need to be aware – if you slow the pace down too much, even the most patient reader is apt to grow restive. 
  39. You need to revise your length. Formula: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft – 10%
  40. Back story is all the stuff that happened before your tale began but which has an impact on the front story. It’s important to get the back story in as quickly as possible, but it’s also important to do it with some grace.

Viktor Frankl on the power of choosing our attitudes.

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way

— Viktor Frankl

Aldous Huxley on the importance of music.

From pure sensation to the intuition of beauty, from pleasure and pain to love and the mystical ecstasy and death — all the things that are fundamental, all the things that, to the human spirit, are most profoundly significant, can only be experienced, not expressed. The rest is always and everywhere silence. After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

— Aldous Huxley

Marcus Aurelius on compassion and empathy.

When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own — not of the same blood or birth, but of the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are obstructions.
  — Macus Aurelius (book Meditations)

Jack Kerouac on kindness

Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you’re already in heaven now.
— Jack Kerouac

Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

Benjamin Franklin: An American Life A very well documented chronicle.

Before reading this book, I decided to read Franklin’s autobiography, and although it is beautifully written with a lot of details, I discovered all the gaps and reasoning behind his ideas after reading Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson.

I was inspired by the way Franklin created and guided his life. Challenging the status quo and designing his own way of living.

I believe it was a gift to humanity that he was an enthusiastic writer and documented his life.

Below are some of the ideas that caught my imagination from this book:


About God.

I believe He is pleased and delights in the happiness of those He has created; and since without virtue man can have no happiness in this world, I firmly believe He delights to see me virtuous

Franklin’s study of nature, he said, convinced him that God created the universe and was infinitely wise, good and powerful. He then explored four possibilities:

  1. God predetermined and predestined everything that happens, eliminating all possibility of free will.
  2. He left things to proceed according to natural laws and the free will of His creatures, and never interferes,
  3. He predestined some things and left some things to free will, but still never interferes.
  4. He sometimes interferes by His particular providence and sets aside the effects which would otherwise have been produced by any of the above causes.

Franklin ended up settling on the fourth option.

The Moral Perfection Project

The following list describes the twelve virtues Franklin thought desirable and wrote a short definition.

This is so interesting since he elaborates on concepts that, without mindfulness, we wouldn’t think about them; they would just be part of our lives, inherited from our family, culture, etc.  – Instead, Franklin decides to define them and try to live his life accordingly.

Temperance: Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.

Silence: Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.

Order: Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.

Resolution: Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.

Frugality: Make no expense but do good to others or yourself; (i.e waste nothing).

Industry: Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.

Sincerity: Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.

Justice: Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.

Moderation: Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.

Cleanliness: Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.

Tranquility: Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.

Chastity: Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.

Bruce Lee: Artist of Life

Bruce Lee: Artist Of LifeThis book showcases Bruce Lee’s private notes and letters, revealing his philosophies and advice to others.

Bruce Lee saw himself as an ‘artist of life’, always trying to be the best version of himself, looking for self-actualisation, rather than self-image actualisation. The first one refers to being honest with oneself and always looking for personal growth with a desire coming from within. The second one refers to the “default setting” for most people that only live for their image – worrying about what other people would think about them.

He tries to simplify these ideas in the following paragraph.

A self-willed man has no other aim than his own growth. He values only one thing, the mysterious power in himself which bids him live and helps him to grow. The power can be neither preserved nor increased nor deepened by money and power, because money and power are the invention of distrust. Those who distrust the life-giving force within them, or who have none, are driven to compensate through such substitutes as money.

And on this one:

It is easy for me to put on a show and be cocky and then feel pretty cool. Or I can do all kinds of phony things and be blinded by it. Or I can show you some really fancy movement. But to express oneself honestly, not lying to oneself—that, my friend, is very hard to do

Each man must seek out realisation himself. No master can give it to him.

Bruce Lee’s hunger for “knowing more” and personal development was remarkable.

I am a teacher as well as a student because I am forever developing and simplifying, but mainly I am known as a teacher, and a notoriously expensive one at that, for when my time is demanded of me my learners pay for its worth.

We play different roles during our life; sometimes we can be a teacher to others (family, friends, other) and other sometimes our role shifts to a learner when we are looking for answers. This was his philosophy for “teachers” and “learners.”

A teacher, a really good teacher, functions as a pointer to truth, but not a giver of truth. He employs a minimum of form to lead his student to the formless. Furthermore, he points out the importance of being able to enter a mold but not being caged in it, or to follow the principles without being bound by them. For a pliable, choiceless observation without exclusion is so essential in the cultivation of martial art—an “altogether alert awareness” without its center or its circumference, to be in it, but not of it. Above all, a teacher should not depend on a method and drill systematic routines; instead, he studies each individual student and awakens him to explore himself, both internally and externally, and ultimately to integrate himself with his being. Such teaching, which is really no teaching, requires a sensitive mind with great flexibility and adaptability, and it is difficult to come by nowadays.

Sincere and serious learners are equally difficult to come by, too. Many students are five-minute enthusiasts; some of them come in with selfish motives, but unfortunately, most of them are secondhand artists, basically conformers. An average practitioner in the martial art seldom learns to express himself; instead, he faithfully follows an instructor, the authority figure, and an imposed pattern. I guess a person finds more security in mass imitation; unfortunately what is nurtured is the depending mind rather than independent inquiry. These tradition-bound teachers reinforce the conditioning through their daily teaching and will not try to understand reality as it is because it condemns them. As time goes by their practitioners might understand some routines and might even become skillful according to a particular pattern. However, they have not come to understand themselves. In other words, they have gained control of the manipulative routine skill they have, but not what they are in themselves.

As human beings, we are ‘work in progress’, and to Bruce, it was clear that self-knowledge is a continuing – non-stop process.

through self-exploration, flexible awareness, and self-expression one finds himself. Such self-knowledge is a continuing process, and the artist that possesses such quality expresses himself with the utmost freedom.

Bruce Lee: About Gung Fu and True Self.

A reminder from Bruce Lee about staying focused, humble and true to yourself.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if you practice Gung Fu or other martial art, the following thought represents what I aim to achieve in life.

 

A gung fu man devotes himself to being self-sufficient and never depends upon the external rating by others for his happiness. A gung fu master, unlike the beginner, holds himself in reserve, is quiet and unassuming, without the least desire to show off. Under the influence of gung fu training his proficiency becomes spiritual, and he himself, grown ever freer through spiritual struggle, is transformed. To him, fame and status mean nothing.

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