Stephen King - On Writing

    Hey guys, so today I'm writing about what I learned and how I came across 

On Writing by Stephen King

    Let me be straight here, I'm not a fan of Stephen King's books. I'm serious. If you've ever read any of King's books, you'll definitely realize that his books are dark. I can't stand that. I once read Doctor Sleep and dropped it because the atmosphere was dark and lacking of hope. It felt like I knew that it had a bad ending (not like bad bad but bad like everyone dies).

    Here's what I learned. There's no magic and no fairy that comes to you at night to suddenly make you good at writing. You need to read and write a lot. That's basically how you get good at writing. If you want to write but "have no time to read", fuhgeddaboudit! "if you don't have time to read, you don't have the time to write".

    Now I bet you're wondering how to find ideas to create stories. The secret is, you don't. "good story ideas seem to quite literally come from nowhere. Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up". King believes that we don't make the stories, the stories make themselves. The job of the writer is to provide them a place to grow and to write about it. He also said that "Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world. The writer's job is to use the tools in his/her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as possible.". Ok, all of what he said may have sounded like some sort of philosophical bullshit. But honestly, I believe him.

    King recommends writing 2 drafts. When writing the first draft, keep the door closed at all times. What this means is to write just from what's in your mind and how you imagine a place/action to be. After you finish the first draft, leave it and don't open it for at least 6 weeks. The second draft is you correcting your first draft and making it nicer, basically rewriting. During the second draft is when you can open the door. You can ask your friend to read it and give their opinions on it. You can now also do research on how a place is supposed to look like or how an action is supposed to be. 
"2nd draft = 1st draft - 10%"

    Honestly, there are a lot more things I learned from the book. But I think this is already a bit too long so I'm ending it here. If you're considering to be a writer, I insist that you read this book because goddammit I learned so much from it. It's definitely one of my favorite books now. Alright that's all, thank you for reading and see you in the next blog.