{"id":6787,"date":"2017-09-21T07:34:43","date_gmt":"2017-09-21T11:34:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6787"},"modified":"2017-09-21T07:34:43","modified_gmt":"2017-09-21T11:34:43","slug":"how-to-write-chair-door-goal-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6787","title":{"rendered":"How to Write: Chair, Door, Goal . . . Truth"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"typing\"<\/a>

photo: Kiran Foster, creative commons license<\/p><\/div>\n

Stephen King\u2019s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craf<\/em>t<\/em><\/a> describes how this mega-best-selling author became a writer. Along the way, he gives common sense advice about writing that benefit anyone seriously interested in becoming a better author. The process he follows is just the start, and here it is.<\/p>\n

Like most people who dispense advice to the novice, he emphasizes the virtue of writing every day, despite the pull of other responsibilities and distractions. Otherwise, he says, \u201cthe characters begin to stale off in my mind\u2014they begin to seem<\/em> like characters instead of real people . . . the excitement of spinning something new begins to fade.\u201d The excitement King talks about is what gets me out of bed every morning before six.<\/p>\n

He also insists that you shut the office door, \u201cyour way of telling the world and yourself that you mean business.\u201d Eliminate distractions\u2014phones, beeping email alerts, insistent cats\u2014anything that takes you away from the page. In my case, cats.<\/p>\n

Goals are important, King thinks, and he tries to write 10 pages a day\u2014about 2000 words. I\u2019m a fan of powering through and getting a completed draft. I try not to get mired in all the inevitable issues and lapses and problems, but fix them in rewrite. Maybe make a note of them, if I see them, so my mind lets them go, and I can move on.<\/p>\n

Ass-in-chair, closed door, goal. Adhering to these basics, King believes, makes writing easier over time. \u201cDon\u2019t wait for the muse to come,\u201d he says, write. So many would-be authors talk to me about needing inspiration, as if it sprinkles down from the clouds rather than up from the mind\u2019s carefully plowed field. King says, \u201cYour job is make sure the muse knows where you\u2019re going to be every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time we\u2019re adults, lots of other people\u2019s words, many not very good, have passed into our brains from books, tv, and movies. When a phrase or scene comes too easily for me, almost unconsciously, my mind is simply replaying someone else\u2019s words\u2014they\u2019re not original any more. In my story, they\u2019re false.<\/p>\n

So now King gets to the hard part. You have to tell the truth<\/em>. Your story\u2019s truth. \u201cThe job of fiction,\u201d he says, \u201cis to find the truth inside the story\u2019s web of lies.\u201d Even when we love the characters in a book and we really, really don\u2019t want it to end, if the book has told the truth, we feel satisfied when we turn that last page.<\/p>\n

Despite how hard it may be to find and express a story\u2019s truth, King says that even the worst three hours he ever spent writing \u201cwere still pretty damned good.\u201d
\n<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stephen King\u2019s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft describes how this mega-best-selling author became a writer. Along the way, he gives common sense advice about writing that benefit anyone seriously interested in becoming a better author. The process he … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[40,174,29],"tags":[166,303,28],"class_list":["post-6787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-first-draft-blog","category-writing","tag-creativity","tag-stephen-king","tag-writers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1Lt","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6787"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6789,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6787\/revisions\/6789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}