Steven King’s memoir stands out from others, not because of his storytelling skills alone, but because of his ability to weave good advice around those stories. It’s the kind of writing that makes you feel like you’re on a treasure hunt; the golden nuggets of knowledge are the main goal, but it’s the journey itself that makes it truly worthwhile in the end.
One way King makes his advice appealing is by embedding it within the chronological tale of his childhood. Chapter 19 recounts King’s sophomore year of high school where he got in trouble with a strict teacher for writing a satirical newspaper that mocked her:
“Her detention lists were the longest of any teacher in the school, but her girls were routinely selected as valedictorians or salutatorians and usually went on to good jobs. Many came to love her. Others loathed her then and likely still do now. These latter girls called her ‘Maggot’ Margitan, as their mothers had no doubt before them. And in The Village Vomit I had an item which began, ‘Miss Margitan, known affectionately to Lisbonians everywhere as Maggot...”(42).
By giving a bit of advice at the end of his stories, King creates both a satisfying ending and an example that makes his advice realistic. Chapter 20 details his experience with the Lisbon Weekly Enterprise after getting out of detention. Here, he receives a great piece of advice from Gould, the school newspaper editor:
“When you’re writing a story, you’re telling yourself the story,’ he said. ‘When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story”(47).
In King’s toolbox, he outlines the most useful tools to keep nearby when writing anything. Among them, the two that stood out to me the most were active voice and commitment.
Active voice is something that was barely mentioned to me in high school but now blares at me from every direction in college writing classes. Although startling, it has a right to blare. Whereas passive voice describes something that is done to an object, the active voice gives the subject more power and direction by describing what something does to another. Unless the intent is to hide the subject from blame, King urges the reader not to be timid in their writing:
“Don’t be a muggle! Throw back your shoulders, stick out your chin, and put the meeting in charge! Write ‘The meeting’s at seven’. There, by God! Don’t you feel better?”(116).
Commitment, although a vague and broad concept, is something I constantly remind myself to keep in my toolbox. In most cases, commitment does not come to me naturally. Every time I sit down to write something, it’s like there’s a magnet underneath the chair repelling me away from the seat. King encourages me to keep going with an analogy:
“Carpenters don’t build monsters, after all; they build houses, stores, and banks. They build some of wood a plank at a time and some of brick a brick at a time. You will build a paragraph at a time, constructing these of your vocabulary and your knowledge of grammar and basic style. As long as you stay level-on-the-level and shave every door, you can build whatever you like—whole mansions, if you have the energy”(130).
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