On Writing

by Stephen King

  I didn’t want to go back to work. I was in a lot of pain, unable to bend my right knee, and restricted to a walker. I couldn’t imagine sitting behind a desk for long, even in my wheelchair. Because of my cataclysmically smashed hip, sitting was torture after forty minutes or so, impossible after an hour and a quarter. Added to this was the book itself, which seemed more daunting than ever—how was I supposed to write about dialogue, character, and getting an agent when the most pressing thing in my world was how long until the next dose of Percocet?

  Yet at the same time I felt I’d reached one of those crossroads moments when you’re all out of choices. And I had been in terrible situations before which the writing had helped me get over—had helped me forget myself for at least a little while. Perhaps it would help me again. It seemed ridiculous to think it might be so, given the level of my pain and physical incapacitation, but there was that voice in the back of my mind, both patient and implacable, telling me that, in the words of the Chambers Brothers, Time Has Come Today. It’s possible for me to disobey that voice, but very difficult to disbelieve it.

  In the end it was Tabby who cast the deciding vote, as she so often has at crucial moments in my life. I’d like to think I’ve done the same for her from time to time, because it seems to me that one of the things marriage is about is casting the tiebreaking vote when you just can’t decide what you should do next.

  My wife is the person in my life who’s most likely to say I’m working too hard, it’s time to slow down, stay away from that damn PowerBook for a little while, Steve, give it a rest. When I told her on that July morning that I thought I’d better go back to work, I expected a lecture. Instead, she asked me where I wanted to set up. I told her I didn’t know, hadn’t even thought about it.

  She thought about it, then said: “I can rig a table for you in the back hall, outside the pantry. There are plenty of plug-ins—you can have your Mac, the little printer, and a fan.” The fan was certainly a must—it had been a terrifically hot summer, and on the day I went back to work, the temperature outside was ninety-five. It wasn’t much cooler in the back hall.

  Tabby spent a couple of hours putting things together, and that afternoon at four o’clock she rolled me out through the kitchen and down the newly installed wheelchair ramp into the back hall. She had made me a wonderful little nest there: laptop and printer connected side by side, table lamp, manuscript (with my notes from the month before placed neatly on top), pens, reference materials. Standing on the corner of the desk was a framed picture of our younger son, which she had taken earlier that summer.

  “Is it all right?” she asked.

  “It’s gorgeous,” I said, and hugged her. It was gorgeous. So is she.

  The former Tabitha Spruce of Oldtown, Maine, knows when I’m working too hard, but she also knows that sometimes it’s the work that bails me out. She got me positioned at the table, kissed me on the temple, and then left me there to find out if I had anything left to say. It turned out I did, a little, but without her intuitive understanding that yes, it was time, I’m not sure either of us would ever have found that out for sure.

  That first writing session lasted an hour and forty minutes, by far the longest period I’d spent sitting upright since being struck by Smith’s van. When it was over, I was dripping with sweat and almost too exhausted to sit up straight in my wheelchair. The pain in my hip was just short of apocalyptic. And the first five hundred words were uniquely terrifying—it was as if I’d never written anything before them in my life. All my old tricks seemed to have deserted me. I stepped from one word to the next like a very old man finding his way across a stream on a zigzag line of wet stones. There was no inspiration that first afternoon, only a kind of stubborn determination and the hope that things would get better if I kept at it.

  Tabby brought me a Pepsi—cold and sweet and good—and as I drank it I looked around and had to laugh despite the pain. I’d written Carrie and ‘Salem’s Lot in the laundry room of a rented trailer. The back hall of our house in Bangor resembled it enough to make me feel almost as if I’d come full circle.

  There was no miraculous breakthrough that afternoon, unless it was the ordinary miracle that comes with any attempt to create something. All I know is that the words started coming a little faster after awhile, then a little faster still. My hip still hurt, my back still hurt, my leg, too, but those hurts began to seem a little farther away. I started to get on top of them. There was no sense of exhilaration, no buzz—not that day—but there was a sense of accomplishment that was almost as good. I’d gotten going, there was that much. The scariest moment is always just before you start.

  After that, things can only get better.

  – 7 –

  For me, things have continued to get better. I’ve had two more operations on my leg since that first sweltering afternoon in the back hall, I’ve had a fairly serious bout of infection, and I continue to take roughly a hundred pills a day, but the external fixator is now gone and I continue to write. On some days that writing is a pretty grim slog. On others—more and more of them as my leg begins to heal and my mind reaccustoms itself to its old routine—I feel that buzz of happiness, that sense of having found the right words and put them in a line. It’s like lifting off in an airplane: you’re on the ground, on the ground, on the ground . . . . and then you’re up, riding on a magical cushion of air and prince of all you survey. That makes me happy, because it’s what I was made to do. I still don’t have much strength—I can do a little less than half of what I used to be able to do in a day—but I’ve had enough to get me to the end of this book, and for that I’m grateful. Writing did not save my life—Dr. David Brown’s skill and my wife’s loving care did that—but it has continued to do what it always has done: it makes my life a brighter and more pleasant place.

  Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy. Some of this book—perhaps too much—has been about how I learned to do it. Much of it has been about how you can do it better. The rest of it—and perhaps the best of it—is a permission slip: 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.

  And Furthermore, Part I: Door Shut, Door Open

  Earlier in this book, when writing about my brief career as a sports reporter for the Lisbon Weekly Enterprise (I was, in fact, the entire sports department; a small-town Howard Cosell), I offered an example of how the editing process works. That example was necessarily brief, and dealt with nonfiction. The passage that follows is fiction. It is completely raw, the sort of thing I feel free to do with the door shut—it’s the story undressed, standing up in nothing but its socks and undershorts. I suggest that you look at it closely before going on to the edited version.

  The Hotel Story

  Mike Enslin was still in the revolving door when he saw Ostermeyer, the manager of the Hotel Dolphin, sitting in one of the overstuffed lobby chairs. Mike’s heart sank a little. Maybe should have brought the damned lawyer along again, after all, he thought. Well, too late now. And even if Ostermeyer had decided to throw up another roadblock or two between Mike and room 1408, that wasn’t all bad; it would simply add to the story when he finally told it.

  Ostermeyer saw him, got up, and was crossing the room with one pudgy hand held out as Mike left the revolving door. The Dolphin was on Sixty-first Street, around the corner from Fifth Avenue; small but smart. A man and woman dressed in evening clothes passed Mike as he reached out and took Ostermeyer’s hand, switching his small overnight case to his left hand in order to do it. The woman was blonde, dressed in black, of course, and the light, flowery smell of her perfume seemed to summarize New York. On the m
ezzanine level, someone was playing “Night and Day” in the bar, as if to underline the summary.

  “Mr. Enslin. Good evening.”

  “Mr. Ostermeyer. Is there a problem?”

  Ostermeyer looked pained. For a moment he glanced around the small, smart lobby, as if for help. At the concierge’s stand, a man was discussing theater tickets with his wife while the concierge himself watched them with a small, patient smile. At the front desk, a man with the rumpled look one only got after long hours in Business Class was discussing his reservation with a woman in a smart black suit that could itself have doubled for evening wear. It was business as usual at the Hotel Dolphin. There was help for everyone except poor Mr. Ostermeyer, who had fallen into the writer’s clutches.

  “Mr. Ostermeyer?” Mike repeated, feeling a little sorry for the man.

  “No,” Ostermeyer said at last. “No problem. But, Mr. Enslin . . . . could I speak to you for a moment in my office?”

  So, Mike thought. He wants to try one more time.

  Under other circumstances he might have been impatient. Now he was not. It would help the section on room 1408, offer the proper ominous tone the readers of his books seemed to crave—it was to be One Final Warning—but that wasn’t all. Mike Enslin hadn’t been sure until now, in spite of all the backing and filling; now he was. Ostermeyer wasn’t playing a part. Ostermeyer was really afraid of room 1408, and what might happen to Mike there tonight.

  “Of course, Mr. Ostermeyer. Should I leave my bag at the desk, or bring it?”

  “Oh, we’ll bring it along, shall we?” Ostermeyer, the good host, reached for it. Yes, he still held out some hope of persuading Mike not to stay in the room. Otherwise, he would have directed Mike to the desk . . . . or taken it there himself. “Allow me.”

  “I’m fine with it,” Mike said. “Nothing but a change of clothes and a toothbrush.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” Mike said, holding his eyes. “I’m afraid I am.”

  For a moment Mike thought Ostermeyer was going to give up. He sighed, a little round man in a dark cutaway coat and a neatly knotted tie, and then he squared his shoulders again. “Very good, Mr. Enslin. Follow me.”

  The hotel manager had seemed tentative in the lobby, depressed, almost beaten. In his oak-paneled office, with the pictures of the hotel on the walls (the Dolphin had opened in October of 1910—Mike might publish without the benefit of reviews in the journals or the big-city papers, but he did his research), Ostermeyer seemed to gain assurance again. There was a Persian carpet on the floor. Two standing lamps cast a mild yellow light. A desk-lamp with a green lozenge-shaped shade stood on the desk, next to a humidor. And next to the humidor were Mike Enslin’s last three books. Paperback editions, of course; there had been no hardbacks. Yet he did quite well. Mine host has been doing a little research of his own, Mike thought.

  Mike sat down in one of the chairs in front of the desk. He expected Ostermeyer to sit behind the desk, where he could draw authority from it, but Ostermeyer surprised him. He sat in the other chair on what he probably thought of as the employees’ side of the desk, crossed his legs, then leaned forward over his tidy little belly to touch the humidor.

  “Cigar, Mr. Enslin? They’re not Cuban, but they’re quite good.”

  “No, thank you. I don’t smoke.”

  Ostermeyer’s eyes shifted to the cigarette behind Mike’s right ear—parked there on a jaunty jut the way an oldtime wisecracking New York reporter might have parked his next smoke just below his fedora with the PRESS tag stuck in the band. The cigarette had become so much a part of him that for a moment Mike honestly didn’t know what Ostermeyer was looking at. Then he remembered, laughed, took it down, looked at it himself, then looked back at Ostermeyer.

  “Haven’t had a cigarette in nine years,” he said. “I had an older brother who died of lung cancer. I quit shortly after he died. The cigarette behind the ear . . . .” He shrugged. “Part affectation, part superstition, I guess. Kind of like the ones you sometimes see on people’s desks or walls, mounted in a little box with a sign saying BREAK GLASS IN CASE OF EMERGENCY. I sometimes tell people I’ll light up in case of nuclear war. Is 1408 a smoking room, Mr. Ostermeyer? Just in case nuclear war breaks out?”

  “As a matter of fact, it is.”

  “Well,” Mike said heartily, “that’s one less worry in the watches of the night.”

  Mr. Ostermeyer sighed again, unamused, but this one didn’t have the disconsolate quality of his lobby-sigh. Yes, it was the room, Mike reckoned. His room. Even this afternoon, when Mike had come accompanied by Robertson, the lawyer, Ostermeyer had seemed less flustered once they were in here. At the time Mike had thought it was partly because they were no longer drawing stares from the passing public, partly because Ostermeyer had given up. Now he knew better. It was the room. And why not? It was a room with good pictures on the walls, a good rug on the floor, and good cigars—although not Cuban—in the humidor. A lot of managers had no doubt conducted a lot of business in here since October of 1910; in its own way it was as New York as the blonde woman in her black off-the-shoulder dress, her smell of perfume and her unarticulated promise of sleek sex in the small hours of the morning—New York sex. Mike himself was from Omaha, although he hadn’t been back there in a lot of years.

  “You still don’t think I can talk you out of this idea of yours, do you?” Ostermeyer asked.

  “I know you can’t,” Mike said, replacing the cigarette behind his ear.

  What follows is revised copy of this same opening passage—it’s the story putting on its clothes, combing its hair, maybe adding just a small dash of cologne. Once these changes are incorporated into my document, I’m ready to open the door and face the world.

  The reasons for the majority of the changes are self-evident; if you flip back and forth between the two versions, I’m confident that you’ll understand almost all of them, and I’m hopeful that you’ll see how raw the first-draft work of even a so-called “professional writer” is once you really examine it.

  Most of the changes are cuts, intended to speed the story. I have cut with Strunk in mind—“Omit needless words”—and also to satisfy the formula stated earlier: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft – 10%.

  I have keyed a few changes for brief explanation:

  1. Obviously, “The Hotel Story” is never going to replace “Killdozer!” or Norma Jean, the Termite Queen as a title. I simply slotted it into the first draft, knowing a better one would occur as I went along. (If a better title doesn’t occur, an editor will usually supply his or her idea of a better one, and the results are usually ugly.) I like “1408” because this is a “thirteenth floor” story, and the numbers add up to thirteen.

  2. Ostermeyer is a long and galumphing name. By changing it to Olin via global replace, I was able to shorten my story by about fifteen lines at a single stroke. Also, by the time I finished “1408,” I had realized it was probably going to be part of an audio collection. I would read the stories myself, and didn’t want to sit there in the little recording booth, saying Ostermeyer, Ostermeyer, Ostermeyer all day long. So I changed it.

  3. I’m doing a lot of the reader’s thinking for him here. Since most readers can think for themselves, I felt free to cut this from five lines to just two.

  4. Too much stage direction, too much belaboring of the obvious, and too much clumsy back story. Out it goes.

  5. Ah, here is the lucky Hawaiian shirt. It shows up in the first draft, but not until about page thirty. That’s too late for an important prop, so I stuck it up front. There’s an old rule of theater that goes, “If there’s a gun on the mantel in Act I, it must go off in Act III.” The reverse is also true; if the main character’s lucky Hawaiian shirt plays a part at the end of a story, it must be introduced early. Otherwise it looks like a deus ex machina (which of course it is).

  6. The first-draft copy reads “Mike sat down in one of the chairs in front of the desk.” Well, duh—where else is he going
to sit? On the floor? I don’t think so, and out it goes. Also out is the business of the Cuban cigars. This is not only trite, it’s the sort of thing bad guys are always saying in bad movies. “Have a cigar! They’re Cuban!” Fuhgeddaboudit!

  7. The first- and second-draft ideas and basic information are the same, but in the second draft, things have been cut to the bone. And look! See that wretched adverb, that “shortly”? Stomped it, didn’t I? No mercy!

  8. And here’s one I didn’t cut . . . . not just an adverb but a Swiftie: “Well,” Mike said heartily . . . . But I stand behind my choice not to cut in this case, would argue that it’s the exception which proves the rule. “Heartily” has been allowed to stand because I want the reader to understand that Mike is making fun of poor Mr. Olin. Just a little, but yes, he’s making fun.

  9. This passage not only belabors the obvious but repeats it. Out it goes. The concept of a person’s feeling comfortable in one’s own special place, however, seemed to clarify Olin’s character, and so I added it.

  I toyed with the idea of including the entire finished text of “1408” in this book, but the idea ran counter to my determination to be brief, for once in my life. If you would like to listen to the entire thing, it’s available as part of a three-story audio collection, Blood and Smoke. You may access a sample on the Simon and Schuster Web site, http://www.SimonandSchuster.com. And remember, for our purposes here, you don’t need to finish the story. This is about engine maintenance, not joyriding.

  And Furthermore, Part II: A Booklist

  When I talk about writing, I usually offer my audiences an abbreviated version of the “On Writing” section which forms the second half of this book. That includes the Prime Rule, of course: Write a lot and read a lot. In the Q-and-A period which follows, someone invariably asks: “What do you read?”