Stephen King on writing, his fears and his new book 11/22/63

by Karen Harrington, author Janeology

Last Friday, I had the privilege of hearing Stephen King speak to a 1,000 member audience in a Dallas suburb. Now I know this month's blog series is about exploring our day jobs as writers, but since mine is currently all about meeting an actual writing dead-line, I hope you won't mind if I share a post I just wrote for my own blog about Mr. King's inspiring talk!

I was delighted to find him optimistic, charming and entertaining throughout his entire 45-minute event. Like so many established writers, King is not only a talented writer, but also a natural oral story-teller.


Fears and First Recognition


Dressed in a relaxed t-shirt and jeans, King began his talk by stating he most often gets asked what scares him. Good question. He replied that his fears include "spiders, snakes, the elevator in his hotel room and death." Then he followed this subject by scaring us with the fact that "1 in 75 people will leave their homes unlocked allowing a psychopath to get in." He said that probably 50 people in the audience had left their cars unlocked and how we might want to check our backseat before we got into our cars. This drew a laugh from the audience, though I'm sure some folks laughed with unease. He went on to talk about his life as a writer, recalling the first time he was ever recognized in public. He was in Pittsburgh promoting a little book called The Shining. There, the men's room attendant recognized him and asked him for an autograph, all while Mr. King was, well, on the john. 


A few years later, he said, he was at a dinner with Bruce Springsteen when he noticed a young girl approaching their table. King prepared to demure to the singing idol, but was elated when he discovered it was HIM she wanted an autograph from!


Researching The New Book


After a few minutes, Mr. King read from his new book 11/22/63, which features the infamous Kennedy assassination and poses the question what if you could change the past? In the novel, his protagonist uses time-travel to do just that. But before setting out to write the book, he did research. He said that writing "is a visual process for me. I need to know what's on the left and on the right" when writing about a place. He came to Dallas and spent a good bit of time in the School Book Depository, even getting special permission to sit in the perch where Lee Harvey Oswald fired the fateful shots. 
Here's a short interview where King talks about this new book. 



Writing And Rituals


In the end, Mr. King concluded his talk by revealing that while most people might say, oh, he's a professional, he's a hot-shot writer, they would be wise to remember that even he approaches a new work and "has a feeling of inadequacy" at first. But he said when he gets going and "warmed up" it's as if he's under some kind of hypnosis and the work begins to flow. He shared his writing rituals, which include making hot tea and setting out his toothpicks before diving back into a story and employing that powerful admonition that a writer's job is to "get the words on the page." 


Memorable Quotes And Notes


"The worst day I had in that [writing] chair was still terrific." 


"I've never texted in my whole damn life!" 


"I feel like Rick Perry at the Republican debates." [following a forgetful moment on stage.]


He was 17 when JFK was assassinated and heard the news on the radio while driving home from High School.


He's finished the sequel to The Shining.


The new Dark Tower book will be out in June 2013.


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Bravo, Mr. King! I'm looking forward to reading this new book. 

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Visit me at www.karenharringtonbooks.com 

Lucky me! I got a signed copy.

Creative Secrets

from Cathy Pickens

Over the next few weeks, some of us will be blogging about our writing process. Coincidentally, I’ve just finished teaching a summer course on the creative process in the MBA program at Queens University of Charlotte. Imagine, 25 business students exploring their creative process.

For many years, I searched for a magic potion, spell, or bullet that would enable me to be creatively productive every day. One that would guarantee the words would flow as if by magic.

What I learned was that, although it is magic, the secrets are much more plebian and ordinary than I’d imagined.

With much reading on topics such as “flow” (that mystical period of being so lost in a project, you lose track of time) and the creative process, I found the first simple secret. Simple shouldn’t be confused with easy, because I still have to force myself to do it, some days. But the secret itself is simple.

I call it the BIC method. It’s a guaranteed, sure-fire, psychologist-tested (by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi) method for achieving flow, that wonderful state of creative nirvana.

Are you ready? BIC stands for Butt in Chair, Bic (or pen or keyboard of your choice) in hand. Same time, same place, every day. That’s it. Simple – though not always easy.

Doesn’t matter if you feel like it or not, if you know what you want to do or say, or not. You show up. No use expecting the muse to show up uninvited. If you aren’t in your accustomed place, she might visit with something special for you and, when she can’t find you, fly on by and give it to someone else.

Some days, the words come, the writing goes well. Other days, I have to laboriously drag each word from the end of my pen. Hardly seemed worth writing on those days – until I discovered another secret: when I went back to re-read the first draft, I could never tell which pages I’d written on the good days and which I’d written on the hard days. Every page needed that next stage of re-visioning.

Which leads to my third and final secret. Many people see creative people as silly, carefree, even undisciplined. Creative people do know how to play, they often enjoy their “work.” But they also know it is hard work, and it requires discipline.

To complete anything – and then to polish it until it shines … and then to start all over again demands discipline. I’ve met lots of talented, successful writers. I’ve never met one who doesn’t work at his or her craft. But I also appreciate Stephen King’s admission in On Writing: he enjoys every stage of the process. Of course you should enjoy it, at every stage, even when it’s hard.

You choose to do the work, commit to the discipline, show up and sit your butt in the chair. You can enjoy it – it’s your choice. No better secret than that.