By NICOLE M. ROBERTSON
Of The Oakland Press
Stephen King can't help writing. He doesn't do it for money; he does it for love.
"I don't believe writers can be made ..." he says at the beginning of his new memoir/writer's guide. "The equipment comes with the original package."
King questioned his motives in writing this book, but reasoned he is very successful -- therefore he must have something to say. That in mind, he set out tips to make good writers better ones.
His advice is simple: Read a lot. Write a lot. Cut out unnecessary words.
The book is divided into three parts -- early memoir, which gives insight into the personality that rendered King's best-selling novels; writing lesson (King taught English, after all); and a short section regarding his recovery from a car accident in 1999. He started the book before the accident, and completed it -- painfully, one word at a time -- during his recovery.
King, like many great writers, believes stories are "found things," like fossils, and a writerıs job is to excavate and present them honestly.
He is humble about his own work -- calling "Maximum Overdrive" a "stinker." Even when it's good, he admits, "a writer has to be a lot crazier than I am to think of 'Carrie' as anyone's intellectual treat."
If you buy this book to learn writing, you might save the $25 and buy Strunk and White's "Elements of Style" ($6.95) instead. King's advice, while colorful, is stuff we've heard before. He knows this. He also knows most books about writing are filled with bull. He cuts to the chase, giving quick lessons, encouragement, a reading list (including J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" books), a sample of a story before and after editing and practical advice for getting published.
King even offers an assignment, setting a scene and asking the reader to write a narrative, then drop him a note at his Web site, www.stephenking.com, to let him know how the exercise went.
Many readers will look to this book not for writing insight, however, but for insight into the man himself. What moves King to write his best-selling novels? Where do his ideas come from? These things the author of "The Green Mile," "The Stand," "Misery," "The Dead Zone" and other million-sellers does not answer. He doesn't know.
King writes what he does know. He shares sardonic snapshots of his youth: his upbringing by a single mother; a baby sitter who thought locking him in a closet good discipline; and a brother who blew the electricity on their block and got away with it. He describes his early publishing career: a parody newspaper he sold at school for a quarter, then retracted with an apology to a teacher. Later, he hung his rejection slips on the wall over his desk.
King credits his solid marriage to fellow novelist Tabitha King as a key in his success. She stuck with him while he worked laundry and janitorial jobs, pulled his aborted drafts of "Carrie" from the trash, kicked King to work on that first big book and helped him kick addiction.
King gives brief, lurid details of his addiction, saying he drank a case of 16-ounce beers a day, snorted cocaine until his nose bled, popped Xanax and slurped mouthwash. It became so bad, he says, he doesn't remember writing the book "Cujo."
He dismisses romantic notions of alcoholic writers as another load of bull.
"Hemingway and Fitzgerald didn't drink because they were creative, alienated or morally weak," he writes. "They drank because it's what alkies are wired up to do."
In the final section of the book, King recounts in agonizing detail the accident that nearly ended his life. He was struck by a van while he was walking near his Maine home. Driver Bryan Smith was shooing his Rottweiler away from a cooler full of meat when he drove onto the shoulder, struck and tossed King into the air, breaking his leg in nine places, among other injuries. Smith later said he was on his way to get "some of those Marzes bars they have up to the store."
"When I hear this little detail some weeks later, it occurs to me that I have nearly been killed by a character right out of one of my own novels. It's almost funny," King writes.
Smith, who had a history of driving violations, pleaded guilty to driving to endanger. King's book was published just as Smithıs own story came to a close. He was found dead in his bed on Sept. 22.
Without reading a single King novel, readers will understand his examples and like the man, his self-effacing manner and his honesty.
Copyright The Oakland Press, Nov. 1, 2000