Writing with the door closed.

One of my favorite books on writing is, well, On Writing by Stephen King. I’ve never actually read it, only listened to it. I first heard the audio version in 2002 and ever since I have listened to it at least once a year, usually right at the beginning of the fall semester, as a sort of rejuvenation of my writing spirit. King reads the book himself and it’s a great presentation. I’ve heard it so many times – and enjoy it so much, to be honest – that listening to it at the end of September, I had fun seeing how many times I could say the lines right along with Stephen. Surprisingly, or perhaps not-so surprisingly, it happened pretty frequently. I guess you could say I’m a King convert when it comes to many of his ideas about writing. I have close to ten copies of the book in its print form, by the way, and they get loaned out to friends on occasion (and were used by the Ron Book Team last week for the October book club discussion) if you’re in the area and we’re on first-name basis.

I’m writing today to bring forth one of King’s great ideas, one he cribbed from a newspaper editor he worked with in high school:

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My Summer Reading List

I have an ambitious reading list for this summer. Just like my dedication of two hours to write a day (or ten hours per week), I’m challenging myself to read for ninety minutes a day on Monday thru Wednesday plus Friday, or six hour a week. I tend to read 40 pages in an hour, … Read more

Chicago Improv Festival – My Trip, Day 1 (Part II)

I’m writing this post about Thursday on Friday, hence references to “last night” and such, even though this is “Day 1, Part II.” Just go with it. 🙂 Google Maps was absolutely right, my trip took just over seven hours, including a bit more that’s all my fault. I got a late start between packing … Read more

Books I gave, books I got

Merry Christmas, dear reader. Books I received as gifts: Best American Short Stories 2008 guest edited by Salman Rushdie The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien Books I gave as Christmas gifts: Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison American Gods by Neil Gaiman The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks 1957 by Pradt & … Read more

Denver Improv Festival – My Trip, Day 3

Our travels took Kelly and me beyond the Denver metro area to Castle Rock to shop for jeans and books at their famed Outlet Mall. While the Vans outlet store apparently no longer exists (it’s where I bought all of my shoes from 2002-2005, including the shoes I’m wearing now… which says a lot about … Read more

Your Friday Recommendation #24

A few weeks back I wrote about Cormac McCarthy’s The Road being turned into a film that will be released this Thanksgiving, and in the process of doing some research for that blog post I stumbled across a new steelbook edition DVD of The Proposition, an excellent film which led me to McCarthy in a … Read more

Browsing books in the store

I was in Walgreens this week waiting for my photos and wandered around the store for a while as the technician tried to fix the photo development machinery. Try as he might, he couldn’t fix the machine but my time spent waiting ended up with me doing something I haven’t done in a long time … Read more

Your Friday Recommendation #20

Scrawlers writer Andrew’s prize is in the mail (oh, Andrew, your prize is in the mail…) and I’m in the middle of re-reading today’s recommendation, On Writing by Stephen King. If you want a petty argument about the worth of taking the advice of a genre writer who appeals to the masses, with all due … Read more

And the winner of the “Back to School” contest is…

Andrew! Congratulations to Andrew for winning our “Back to School” contest. You can read his winning entry here. Andrew will receive a hardcopy edition of “On Writing” by Stephen King, a book we’ve discussed at The Scrawl several times in the last two years – including it’s appearance last week as Your Friday Recommendation. Thanks … Read more