Not-So-Spooky Advice from Stephen King

Over at The Faculty Lounge, a timely post for Halloween recognizes the writing wisdom of one of America's creepiest writers, Stephen King.  This gave me the idea to compile some of the wisdom from his book on writing, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, as fright night draws to a close.

Thoughts on word choice:

One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you're maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones.  This is like dressing up a household pet in evening clothes.  The pet is embarrassed and the person who committed this act of premeditated cuteness should be even more embarrassed.  Make yourself a solemn promise right now that you'll never use 'emolument' when you mean 'tip'...

On criticism:

Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and get it right — as right as you can, anyway — it belongs to anyone who wants to read it. Or criticize it.

On reading:

If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.

Writing as an earnest craft:

You must not come lightly to the blank page.

Even if you are not working on the Great American Horror Novel, King's advice hits the mark.  Hopefully whatever you and your students are writing this fall is more of a treat than a trick.

(dbb)