Here’s the thing.  Some of you are going to your classes, working to become Chemists, Mathematicians, Engineers, Computer Scientists, but in your heart you want to be a writer.  To hide this from yourself you have probably told yourself, “I’ll never make a living at that.” Or the one person you revealed your secret to said “You’ll never make a living at that.”  But the truth is simple.  You want to be a writer.  You know you want too.

Here’s another thing.  I have never read a Stephen King novel.  I grew up in a home where everybody read. He had little formal education but Daddy read the newspaper like it was a sacred text and he read books on the history of WW II.  Momma read novels.  There were always books in our house.  So like my sister and brothers, I became a reader and read everything; comic books, science fiction, general fiction novels, biographies, mysteries. But Stephen King I never read.  Yet something about his book On Writing intrigued me.

I’m sure it was because I learned that Mr. King didn’t just write pure horror.  I have seen two movies based on his writing: The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile.  These movies moved my spirit and my emotion with their poetry. When I learned that “The Green Mile” was based on his work I was shocked into a new respect for Mr. King’s writing abilities.

A year or so after I saw “The Green Mile” On Writing was published and was in all the bookstores.  I picked it up and bought it.  When I began to read, I was happy to find myself caught up in the momentum created by a master writer.

Here’s the thing.  Mr. King starts off by giving us a glimpse into some of the childhood events that he thinks influence the kind of writer he became.  But, as he says, in its style that part of the book is not an autobiography.  Rather it is his

“… attempt to show how one writer was formed.  Not how one writer was made; I don’t believe writers can be made… The equipment comes with the original package.  Yet it is by no means unusual equipment; I believe large numbers of people have at least some talent as writers and storytellers, and that those talents can be strengthened and sharpened.”

It’s fun to read the “snapshots from the somewhat more coherent days of [his] adolescence and young manhood.”  It is also a little scary because Mr. King lets us inside to see his demon; alcohol.  He shows us how alcohol almost consumed him and how the desire to write (and his wife and friends) saved him.  That is an important glimpse because it shows us how things can get out of hand when a writer loses the sense of balance.  On this point Mr. King is philosophical  when he writes,

“I came through all the stuff I told you about… and now I’m going to tell you as much as I can about the job [of being a writer]…

It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room.  Life isn’t a support system for art.  It’s the other way around.”

Mr. King and I are in complete agreement.  No matter how tough your life has been or has seemed to be, your goal must still be to find a way to live positively.  So to live life you need more than a college degree.  You need some art, some spirituality to make life worth living.

Here’s another thing.  When it comes to telling the world about the art of writing, Mr. King is dead on. 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 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.”

He also instructs the reader in the small details, the tools, of the writing craft. Mr. King makes his point well when he writes,

“… to write to your best abilities, it behooves you to construct your own toolbox and then build up enough muscle so you can carry it with you.  Then, instead of looking at a hard job and getting discouraged, you will perhaps seize the correct tool and get immediately to work.”

In the writer’s toolbox the basic tools are vocabulary and grammar.  You can’t say you want to be a writer if you are not willing to develop the skills necessary to use these tools.  And you put those tools to use in the creation of the basic unit of writing, the paragraph.  I was surprised that Mr. King claimed that the paragraph is the basic writing unit and not the sentence, but he convinced me.  That section of his book is worth my reading every couple of months.

Here’s the thing.  Mr. King challenges the would-be writer.  He tells us that if we are serious about being a writer then we have to get our selves prepared to write.

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.  There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.”

Why does Mr. King think that the would-be writer must be a reader?

“The real importance of reading is that it creates an ease and intimacy with the process of writing… [Reading] also offers you a constantly growing knowledge of what has been done and what hasn’t, what is trite and what is fresh, what works and what just lies there dying (or dead) on the page.  The more you read, the less apt you are to make a fool of yourself with your pen or word processor.”

Here’s another thing.  Mr. King is a mystic when it comes to writing.  He believes that the story the writer is to write is waiting to be found, dug up, by the writer. “… [S]tories are found things, like fossils in the ground…” Mr. King writes.  He claims that

“Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world.  The writer’s job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as possible…”

Here’s the final thing.  For any would-be writer, Mr. King has provided a guide to the writing craft.  To do that Mr. King had to tell us a bit about him self.  To end his book, he even tells us about being hit by a van and coming close to death.  The lesson: Writing is a part of life and a part of the writer’s spirit.  It is not something the writer can get away from.  Mr. King says writing is not about money, fame or friends, but about “…enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life.” He also says that the best thing about his book is that it is a “…permission slip [to write]: you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.”

So, if you want to write you have permission.  And truth be told, deciding to write does not mean you have to give up your major.    What you are learning through your studies will give you something to write about.  Read, as an example, Uncle Petros and Golback’s Conjecture.  Written about a mathematical obsession, it is a novel written by a mathematician and it has received very positive reviews.  I liked it too.

My point is simple.  You have no excuse not to write, so write.  You see, the desire to write will keep after you.  So rather than hiding from your self, read Stephen King’s book On Writing.  Put to better use all that time you spend avoiding your desire.

You know you want to write.  You know you want too.