Title: Stephen King "Reading to Write" | creative-writing
Headings: Creative Writing
Creative Writing
My Response

Content: God willing I never will
Asteroid Miners (which wasn’t the title, but that’s close enough) was an important book in my life as a reader. Almost everyone can remember losing his or her virginity, and most writers can remember the first book he/she put down thinking; I can do better than this, Hell, I am doing better than this! What can be more encouraging to the struggling writer than to realize his/her work is unquestionably better than that of someone who actually got paid for his/her stuff? One learns most clearly what not to do by reading bad prose--- one novel like Asteroid Miners ( or Valley of the Dolls, Flowers in the Attic, and The Bridges of Madison County,to name just a few) is worth a semester at a good writing school, even with the superstar guest lecturers thrown in. Good writing, on the other hand, teaches the learning writer about style, graceful narration, plot development, the creation of believable characters, and truth-telling. A novel like The Grapes of Wrath may fill a new writer with feelings of despair and good old-fashioned jealousy--- “ I’ll never be able to write anything that good,not if I live to be a thousand”--- but such feelings can also serve as a spur, goading the writer to work harder and aim higher. Being swept away by a combination of great story and great writing--- of being flattened, in fact--- is part of every writer’s necessary formations,You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you. So we read to experience the mediocre and the outright rotten; such experience helps us to recognize those things when they begin to creep into our our own work, and to steer clear of them.