On Writing

I'm really into this blog thing, and that's funny for me cause I don't usually dig technology all that much. Before I had this blog I thought writing would be boring and tedious. Prose never came easy to me, but I would never complain about that because a lot of other things did. I think the most discouraging thing in my writing life happened my senior year of high school when Mrs. Sanmartino gave me a "C" on my paper about revolts and revolutions. We were to do the standard two page essay on a revolt or revolution, hand written during class with proper margins and indents and all that jazz. To this day I don't know why, but I wrote my paper about Star Wars and how the Jedi were staging a revolution against the evil Empire. I thought it was half way decent, the teacher did not. With that stupid red pencil, she made it clear to me that my paper was not funny and such essays should not be written about fictional accounts. Hmmm, I must have missed that part of the directions. I can still recall the last line of my paper, "In the end the Empire was defeated by Jedi rebellion and everything was OK", to which she replied,"Do not use OK in a paper, and if you do, it is okay, not OK". Oppps. Looking back on it I probably deserved worse that a C. I really like Mrs. Sanmartino, she was kick ass. She had us read books like "On the Road", "1984", "Animal Farm", "A day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", "One Flew Over the Cookoo's Nest", and others. Looking back on it, those were some heavy books to be reading in a public high school. We also swore she snuck out of the room to get high...like I said, she was kick ass.

As I started, I like this blog thing and I like writing. I know I have terrible grammar, I can't spell, and I don't know the parts of speech. I stink at punctuation, leave misplaced modifiers all over, and use to many adverbs. So, just like everything else in life, I'm trying to get better. That's why I bought Stephen King's "On Writing".
The book starts out with King describing his life and how he came to be a writer. No other writer is as fluent as Stephen King, meaning one can fly through his books with no problem, almost like someone is speaking right to you. He tells how he was a struggling writer, working in a laudromat trying to support his wife and kid. Just when things were getting terrible, someone bought "Carrie" for $400,000, and that was that.
The "On Writing" part is all prose about how to make interesting sentences, why grammar is important, how to write dialogue, and so forth. He also suggests ideas such as how long to write in each session, where to do it, how to proof read, and even how to get published. King suggests that if you want to be a good writer, you must read and write for a total or 6-8 hours per day and you must like doing this, not force yourself. If anyone is interested in Stephen King or how one of the most read authors of our time thinks, pick up this book. Its an easy read and worth the time.