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.

Just Like That

I don't watch much t.v. - both because it's rarely my choice, and because who has the time when one tries to write on top of having a young family? But last night I watched a couple mindless, entertaining shows with some friends. Through the course of dozens of commercial breaks, we saw lots of movie previews.

One in particular, Last Chance Harvey, with Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson, struck my fancy. Something in that one-minute clip spoke to me and said, That looks like a really good story.

And it kinda made sense in a new way, this writing of mine.

I want to be the one behind the story. I want to be the one who makes someone say Wow, that's gonna be good. Or Wow, that was so good.

You know what I mean?

Rejection: It Happens

Even the most famous of writers - and their most famous of books - got rejected now and again. I found it encouraging to read through a list found at Famous Rejections and spy blurbs like:


Dr. Seuss got rejection letters, too. Here is one:"too different from other juveniles on the market to warrant its selling."

Mystery writer Mary Higgins Clark recently received a $60 plus million dollar advance on her next five books, but this is what happened when she was sending out her manuscript "Journey Back to Love" in the early 1960s: "We found the heroine as boring as her husband did."

and

H.G. Wells had to endure the indignity of a rejection when he submitted his manuscript, "The War of the Worlds" that said, "An endless nightmare. I do not believe it would 'take'...I think the verdict would be 'Oh don't read that horrid book'."


Click on the link above to read more examples. And remember, we can persevere, too.