Books for Writers: Stephen King's On Writing

I was told that, as a writer, I HAD to read Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.
I heard time and time again that this was a must-read, that writers read this book like its their bible. But I had already found my writing bible (or Bibles I should say) Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird of course The Elements of Style.

Bear in mind this book is a memoir, so the first half of the book is about Stephen King's life: his childhood as a poor kid with a lot of health problems, and his struggles with alcoholism. While I enjoyed reading about how his first book, Carrie came to be published, I otherwise found this section of the memoir to be rather uninteresting and somewhat irrelevant though King says in the postscript, this section is his attempt to "show some of the incidents and life-situations which made me into the sort of writer I turned out to be." Fair enough I suppose.

The second half of On Writing is more of what I was looking for: reflections and advice on the craft on of writing. King offers a lot of technical writing advice, most notably: The adverb is not your friend. King says: "I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs." King also gives advice about dialogue and avoiding the passive tense but he also admits, "You need only look back through some of my own fiction to know that I'm just another ordinary sinner."

My first time through his memoir, it made me feel like an inept writer, coming nowhere close to his daily goal of ten pages (that amounts to 2,000 words a day, 180,000 words over a three-month span, what he calls a goodish length for a book.) No wonder the guy has an entire shelf of books at any given bookstore or library. I found myself resenting his full-time writing life and his daily walks during stays at his summer house in Maine. Sometimes it just came across like writing isn't ever a struggle, that it comes so easily to him. (Maybe I need to go back and read Anne Lamott's chapter on jealousy...)

Perhaps this book will be more appreciated by Stephen King fans, looking to learn more about his life and behind the scenes writing. Still, while King's book on the craft isn't my favorite, he offers plenty of good advice and even includes a corrected story, a book list, and a writing assignment.

King reminds us what I believe to be the foundation for any writer: "If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot."