The hardest part of writing thrillers is coming up with new villains
Kerri Miller's Must-Read
"On Writing"by Stephen King
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Stephen King took note, recently, of the rash of arrests of creepy clowns and tweeted: “Hey guys, it’s time to cool down the clown hysteria.”
A Canadian newspaper columnist quickly chided the Master of Horror, reminding him that he himself had ignited the clown hysteria with his creation of Pennywise in his novel “It.”
The only King novel I’ve ever had the intestinal fortitude to finish was “11/22/63.” The rest of his fiction scares the daylights out of me.
But I reach often for King’s nonfiction book about the craft of writing. It’s one of my go-to’s when I want to nudge a writing legend like John Irving or Joan Didion into a fuller analysis of how they pull off such extraordinary literary acrobatics. I also open it when I’m interviewing a new writer, like Erin Morgenstern of “The Night Circus," or Audrey Niffenegger of "The Time Traveler's Wife," who I interviewed alongside Stephen King a few years ago.
King’s writing wisdom guides me in conversations about where instinct and craft meet. He says in his “On Writing” foreword: “Fiction writers, present company included, don’t understand very much about what they do — not why it works when it’s good, not why it doesn’t work when it’s bad.”
So, even if I can’t stomach King's horror masterpieces, creepy clowns and all, his penetrating insight on how the best writers do what they do has been invaluable.
-K.M.
PS: Here are just a couple of the books that King put on his must-read list at the back of “On Writing”: “Plainsong” by Kent Haruf; “One True Thing” by Anna Quindlen; “The Tooth Fairy” by Graham Joyce and “A Widow for One Year” by John Irving.
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