More From Steven King

Since I seem to be on the roll with encouraging posts this week (and why not? you guys are forever giving me phenomenal encouragement), I thought I'd give another good chunk from Steven King's On Writing.

He says:

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 your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick &$! 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.

I'm not asking you to come reverently or unquestioningly; I'm not asking you to be politically correct or cast aside your sense of humor... This isn't a popularity contest, it's not the moral Olympics, and it's not church. But it's writing... not washing the car or putting on eyeliner. If you can take it seriously, we can do business. If you can't or won't, it's time for you to close the book and do something else.

Wash the car, maybe.

All Hail the Stephen King!

I can't claim to be a fan of Stephen King. To speak of his fiction, well, I can't say much. I've tried to read things like Pet Semetary and It but, though I've seen several of the movies in the past, I couldn't get into the written versions. Not because of his voice or style, but because I'm not a reader of horror, plain and simple.

So when other writers would reference his book On Writing, "a memoir of the craft," I'd think to myself Really? The master of horror? A non-fiction book? But so many raved of its perfection, I thought I'd give it a try. He's successful. Many, many times over. 50+ WORLDWIDE bestsellers. Kinda tells me he might have something worth sayin'.

Boy, does he. He's straightforward, courteous, funny, very personable. I enjoy his approach, and I find inspiration at every page turn. Motivation is oozing from his words into my core. Corny? Yeah. But true.

Here's the first nugget worth sharing. Relish. Digest. Apply.

Let's get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; 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.