On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Stephen King

a book whose company, upon completion, i sorely missed.

---

...to write is human, to edit is divine.
13

Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recogniz them when they show up.
37

…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––as right as you can, anyway––it belongs to anyone who wants to read it.
57

Having someone who believes in you makes a lot of difference. They don't have to make speeches. Just believing is usually enough.
74

...stopping a piece of work just because it's hard, either emmotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.
78

Creative people probably do run a greater risk of alcoholism and addiction than those in some other jobs, but so what? We all look the same when we're puking in the gutter.
99

Life isn't a support-system for art. It's the other way around.
101

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 big ashamed of your short ones.
117

Remember that the basic rule of vocabulary is use the first word that comes to your mind, if it is appropriate and colorful. If you hesitate and cogitate, you will come up with another word––of course you will, there's always another word––but it probably won't be as good as your first one, or as close to what you really mean.
118

...the reader must always be your main concern; without Constant Reader, you are just a voice quacking in the void.
124

Writing is seduction. Good talk is part of seduction.
134

What you know makes you unique in some other way. Be brave. Map the enemy's positions, come back, tell us all you know.
162

...if you can do it for joy, you can do it forever.
249

...you can, you should, and if you're brave enough to start, you will. Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink.

Drink and be filled up.
270