Stephen King and Me

I've been writing since I was a kid. I used to go around my neighborhood with this little red spiral notebook and write down random things of interest (and I lived in a trailer park, so there were lots of interesting things to see), then make short stories out of what I found. It never amounted to much more than a page or so, but it thrilled me in some nameless way. It was similar to the feeling I got when friends and relatives told me I was a good artist. I was always a quiet child, never athletic or outgoing like most of the kids I knew. Here was something else I was good at, something I could show my mom to make her proud of me.

I wish I had kept that notebook so that I could go back and read the thoughts of a nine year-old me. I do remember a few of my ramblings from those dim days, however: "--Leaves on the ground, dancing in the breeze like confetti thrown on New Year's Eve". You may not believe a kid could put words together in that way, but I wasn't your average kid. I read Stephen King's IT at ten years old and instantly became a fan. It appealed to my creative side, to the aspiring writer in me. Even though I didn't fully understand the more adult parts of the book, I understood what King was saying, and I appreciated that he understood his characters so well.

That may sound weird, but think about it for a moment....ever read The Firm? Grisham is a great writer, don't get me wrong--and The Firm is a hell of a story--but the characters are a bit stale. King really knows the people he writes about. He gets into their heads and hearts and breathes life into them. I'm still impressed with his ability to write from a child's point of view, and not just pre-teens, like in IT or The Body ("Stand By Me", for you movie lovers out there). There is a three year-old character in Bag of Bones named Kyra (my daughter's name, btw) who is totally believeable; so much so, in fact, that I laughed out loud at her adorably innocent one-liners and baby-ish pronounciation.

Stephen King has been a huge influence on me and my writing style. I believe that reading his books has taught me more than any college writing course could (good for me, 'cause I didn't go to college), because I'm able to get so engrossed in his books that I learn about language and style almost by accident. His book On Writing has also been enormously helpful and I recommend it to anyone looking to brush up on their writing skills. He has several insightful things to say about writers, and I happen to strongly agree with pretty much all of them. The two most important, however, are as follows:

* You cannot be a good writer if you are not an avid reader. It is simply not possible.

* Stories are not made up; they are found things, like the edge of a bit of treasure sticking up out of the earth. A writer only has to unearth it and make it his own.