Year in (Book) Review: On Writing

One of the most important elements of these little book reviews, up to this point, has been all-inclusiveness. I think, thematically and hypothetically, what I review can be read by anyone. If you're a guy and you want to read The Heretic's Daughter, or a lit snob secretly reading Dear John, who are we, fellow bookworms, to judge? (Okay, I'm totally going to judge you for the Dear John one. It's so bad.)

This one might be the exception, and it makes me kind of sad. I've just finished Stephen King's On Writing, and I was none too happy about it. My gauge for a good book is that I'll read the first two thirds of it as quickly as my eyes and sleep will let me, then slow down almost to a standstill for the final third, simply because I don't want it to end. This has little to do with the caliber of author or of the writing -- I followed this pattern with the finale of the Twilight series in exactly the same way I have done with every F. Scott Fitzgerald book.

Some books, apparently, have just an imperceptible amount of crack sprinkled in the pages. This is the only way to explain Twilight. It is not a particularly well written book series, really, and the story is just weird. And yet, could you put it down? Well, I don't care if you could or not. I could not. I read, in my bed, unfed and unshowered and unimpressed by world events, for four days straight.

That is how I felt about King's memoir: half history, half mechanics ... like I could -- should -- snort the pages. Like I would -- could -- eat the words right off the page.

Perhaps the most surprising part to me? That Stephen King at one point weighed in upwards of 215 pounds. That, even in the times when he was by his own estimation light, he weighed nearly 170. Those are probably not the parts of the story he was hoping his readers would cling to. But it's almost like everything else he writes is so prolific, so profound and perfectly creative and inspiring and earth-shattering, that something as simple as realizing that Stephen King is not, as I might have imagined him had I ever taken the time to imagine him, a wimpy, minuscule kind of guy. Go fucking figure. Also, and my regular readers won't be surprised by this at all, I love, I mean LOVE, that he says fuck. A lot. All the time. For absolutely no reason. Just because there are people in the world -- people like me and people like Stephen fucking King -- who say fuck a lot. We aren't unintelligent. We aren't even uneducated. We just say fuck a lot because it fits and it sits so comfortably on the tongue.

I don't know how a book on the craft of writing will fit into the literary genre of you, my intelligent and well-read friends, who are either not writers or huge fans of the science fiction/horror genres. There are a lot -- millions, literally -- of insanely excellent books to read, and it's sadly impossible to get to them all. But this is a great book. It's a great insight to how a genius writer makes his genius work.