I find it hard to concentrate on anything resembling a textbook, but luckily Stephen King’s much praised “memoir of the craft” is nothing of the sort.

The first section is titled “C.V.“, but is more of an autobiography, hitting a nice medium between personal anecdotes about his childhood and his early writing career. Through this section King explains why he writes and how he started. I got my pen out on page 55 and didn’t stop taking notes until the end of the book. The first gem was from his first editor at a local newspaper: “When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story…. When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.” Continue reading →