YouSaid · the spoken record

Stephen King

lines on the record: 60
first: 2021-10-10
most recent: 2021-10-10
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“I put it aside. I was not sure how to continue, or if I should continue at all. Writing fiction was almost as much fun as it had ever been, but every word of this non fiction book was a kind of torture. And then just one sentence that I think is fantastic the scariest moment is always just before you start.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you're able to get inside their mind and realize, okay, this guy knows he chose a difficult path in life on any did it so on purpose. You learn best by reading a lot and writing a lot. And the most valuable lessons of all are the ones you teach yourself. These lessons almost always occur when the study door is closed. Another variation of the idea I think he was trying to express in that paragraph is that formidable people are built in solitude.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Surely it's one of the things that they're good for. He's got a great description of how difficult, you know, anytime you're doing, he's talking about being a writer, being a lonely job, anytime you're doing something difficult, it's some degree lonely. You have to be a little off to want to do this. Like, why don't you just go get a normal job? You're kind of crazy to want to do something different. All the people that we study, all the people that listen to this, they're a little bit crazy in a good way. But he says, writing can be difficult. Writing can be at a difficult, lonely job. It's like crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a bathtub. There's plenty of opportunity for self-doubt. And one of the great things about me reading the words and having a meeting of the mind with Stephen King, right, is the fact that he talks about this. I know I'm off. I know I'm crazy to do this. But I have to be this way. It's very inspiring and refreshing to read somebody else's inner monologue and, you know, the things that they might not discuss with other people, they write down a book.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Down to the grindstone in the first place and then kept it there. The answer doesn't always come right away, but there usually is one, and it's usually not too hard to find either. And then he gives advice. Like, you are unique in the sense that only you have had your unique set of experiences the way those experiences are intertwined with the way your mind works, what your personality is, your natural interests are. It's like you need to imbibe your work with who you are that makes it more unique. We see this like many companies take on the personality of their founders, right? It's just like an expansion of, I think it was in the book Inside Steve Jobs Brain. They're like Apple's just 10,000 versions of Steve Jobs. I forgot the exact sentence, but it's that same idea. It's like just an extension of who you are. So don't shy away from that. Inject more of your weird personality into it. It makes you unique. It differentiates yourself, right? You undoubtedly have your own thoughts, interests, and concerns, and they have arisen, as mine have from your experiences and adventures as a human being. You should use them in your work. That's not all those ideas are there for, perhaps, but”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's another benefit of thinking of writing the book. Yeah, the second half of the book, it's all about his approach to his own craft, but you also see that he's a human just like you and I. He's constantly running into dead ends. He's not sure of himself. He's making mistakes over and over again. It's like everybody, the way you feel, that's a normal. Everybody feels that way. You're doing something difficult. It's not going to be easy. He's got another good idea on this page. Talks about, you know, why are you doing what you're doing? Do you actually know why? Maybe you started doing something. You let the momentum carry you forward. Take a break. I'm like, why am I doing this? It's really important. It's what we, like humans need to know why. I've never hesitated to ask myself either before starting the second draft of a book or while stuck for an idea in the first draft, just what it is I'm writing about. Why am I spending the time doing this when I could be playing my guitar or riding my motorcycle? What got my nose?”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And a few pages later, he describes this idea as succinctly as possible. For me, not working is the real work. He talks about this just because I like doing it doesn't mean it comes easily to me. He gives us advice if you're stuck, take a break, go get bored. This is exactly what David Ogave used to say. It's like, I have long periods. You know, the guy spent all his time working, reading, and writing. That was his job, right? And he talks about, you know, when I'm stuck, I wind up, I have long periods where I do nothing. I go ride a bike. I listen to music. I go for walks. I don't work. And then I get this flood of my subconscious that actually helps me solve the problem I'm stuck on. So he says, boredom can be a very good thing for someone in a creative jam. For weeks, I got exactly nowhere in my thinking. It all seemed too hard, too fucking complex. I had run out of too many plot lines and they were in danger of becoming snarled. I circled the problem again and again, beat my fists on it, knocking my head against it, and then one day, when I was thinking of nothing, the answer came to me.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's another way to say find work that looks like play to you, right? And so Kobe talks about this. It's like, listen, if you have to, like, if I have to convince you to get into the gym, like, you need to find another profession. I wake up excited to go train. I wake up excited to go practice. I wake up excited to go play the game. And so his point, and he was given a speech to an audience before, is like, if you ever find yourself in a profession where you have to like pull yourself to do things or you're just dreading it, go find another profession. Stephen King is saying the same thing here. You're telling me you want to be a writer. You don't want to write just as much as my son doesn't want to play a saxophone. That sort of strenuous reading and writing program I advocate four to six hours a day every day will not seem strenuous if you really enjoy doing these things and you have an aptitude for them.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“where the deposits of talent may be richer and the fund quotient higher. And so Stephen King's approach to writing and reading is the same approach that Kobe Bryant had to basketball, and I'll talk about that in a minute. Talent renders the whole idea of rehearsal meaningless. When you find something in which you are talented, you do it whatever it is until your fingers bleed or your eyes are ready to fall out of your head. That sort of strenuous reading and writing program I advocate four to six hours a day every day will not seem strenuous if you really enjoy doing”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yourself, yeah, I want to be a writer, I want to be this, I want to be this, I want to be the best at this, I want to do whatever the case is. Okay, well, how did you spend your day yesterday? Taking inventory of your time. Those are the things you actually want to do. Actions express your priority. So he's talking about one of his sons, his young son, Owen, wanted to play the saxophone. And he starts out practicing his own time and then slowly before he tells his dad he wants to quit, his dad already knew he wanted to quit. And he says, I knew not because Owen stopped practicing, but because he was practicing only during the periods that his music teacher had set for him. As soon as his practice time was over, it was back into the case, and there it stayed until the next lesson or practice time. What this suggested to me was that when it came to the sacks and my son, there was never going to be any real playtime. It was all going to be rehearsal. That's no good. If there's no joy in it, it's just no good. It's best to go on to some other area.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can I be blunt on the subject? If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write. It's simple as that. And that was in response to people saying, yeah, I want to be a writer, but I don't have time to read. They actually say, and he said he's had people say this to his face. Imagine getting that close to Stephen King. You should be embarrassed. I'd be embarrassed to say something like that, assuming that this is a writer you admire. You worked yourself in your position. Maybe you went to one of his book signings or a case and it's like, yeah, I want to do what you do, but I don't have time. I mean, come on, man. He's going to talk about, and he's going to expound on this idea. Because you could have, I mean, really, if it's important to you, you make time for it, right? Actions, one of my favorite sayings I talk about all the time and chastise myself with his actions express priority. Like if I'm saying something's important to me, then I analyze what's coming out of my mouth, what I'm actually saying is important, and then I compare how I'm spending my time, how I spend my time is actually what's important to me, not the lies I tell myself, right? It's very easy to like.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then another idea he points out that I've seen over and over again that you can draw inspiration or you can know the right way to do something by seeing it done the wrong way. So it's like most writers can remember the first book he or she put down thinking, I can do better than this. Hell, I am going to do better than this. What could be more encouraging to the struggling writer than to realize that his or her work is unquestionably better than that of someone who actually got paid for his or her stuff? And this is where he goes back to unquestionably holding us to high standards. And his whole point here is like most people are full of excuses, which we just saw in that story. Chemo offers his services for free just to help out to a ton of people. Yeah, I'll be there tomorrow. They never show up, right? That's just this is just what most humans quit. Most humans can't stick to anything. Most humans are full of excuses. And so Stevens going to draw the line and stand here. It's like, you better make sure that you're actually going to do this stuff. Why are you reading this book if you're not going to act on it, right?”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so this idea that books are just made out of books, right? And he says that. If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others. Read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of. There's no shortcut. I'm a slow reader, but I usually get through 70 or 80 books a year, mostly fiction. I don't read in order to study the craft. I read because I like to read, yet there is a learning process going on. And so that's an echo of the idea that we covered a few podcasts back, the almanac of Naval Rabicant, find work that feels like play to you but looks like work to others.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so we see he's going to hold us just like Kemo held Derek Sivers to high expectations, right? Stephen King's going to say the same thing to us. What follows is everything I know about how to write good fiction. I'll be as brief as possible because your time is valuable and so is mine. And we both understand that the hours you spend talking about writing is time we don't spend actually doing it. I'll be as encouraging as possible because it's my nature and because I love the job. I want you to love it too. But if you don't want to work your ass off, you have no business trying to write well. So if you aren't willing to work hard, forget it, right? It's right that you should do all the work and burn all the midnight oil. There's stuff in there that can change your life. Believe me, I know.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Unquestioningly, I'm not asking you to be politically correct or cast aside your sense of humor. This isn't a popularity contest. It's not the moral Olympics, and it's not church. But it's writing, damn it, not washing the car or putting on eyeliner. If you can take it seriously, we can do business. If you can't or won't, it's time for you to close the book and do something else.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so the first, that's what he considers his CV, his mini memoir. Then he goes into how he thinks about his craft. So there's more highlights there. But this is really about how to approach your work. And you're going to see his intensity. I would say that he brings to it. It's like it's not going to run my life, but it's an important part of life, right? It's there to support life. But it isn't life. So this is Stephen King on how to approach your work. He's going to talk about writing, but this applies to so many other things, right? You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair. The sense that you can never completely put on the page what's in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fist clench and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again. You must not come lightly to the blank page. I'm not asking you to come reverently or”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I came through all the stuff I told you about, and plenty more that I didn't, and now I'm going to tell you as much as I care, as much as I can about the job, as promised, it won't take long. It starts with this. Put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write remind yourself why it isn't in the middle of the room. Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A year or two after I sobered up, I got rid of that monstrosity and put it in a living room and put in a living room suite where it had been. So this is in his office, right? In the early 90s, before they moved out onto their own lives, my kids sometimes came up in the evening to watch a basketball game or a movie and eat pizza. They usually left a box full of crust behind when they moved on, but I didn't care. They came, they seemed to enjoy being with me, and I know I enjoyed being with them. I got another desk. It's handmade, beautiful, and half the size. I put it in the far west end of the office in a corner under the eve. I'm sitting under that eave right now. A fifty three year old man with bad eyes, a gimp leg, and no hangover. I'm doing what I know how to do and as well as I know how to do it.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“drugs I've never even heard of. They wound up having an intervention, he's sober now, but he says there's entire books he wrote the book Kujo, which I was also turned into a movie. He's like, I don't remember writing that book. I was so drunk and high all the time. I don't remember any of this. And so at this point that he's writing the story he's about to tell us. He's sober. They wind up having an intervention, his family, and everybody else worried about him. And I think his wife and kids were threatened to leave. And so he wind up getting his act together. But this is just a fantastic story. And it's about putting work in its proper place. The last thing I want to tell you in this part is about my desk. For years, I dreamed of having the sort of massive oak slab that would dominate a room. No more child's desk in my trailer laundry closet. In 1981, I got the one I wanted and placed it in the middle of a spacious, skylighted study. For six years I sat behind that desk, either drunk or wrecked out of my mind like a ship's captain in charge of a voyage to nowhere.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My shoulder at our shitty little apartment just as I had, and began to cry. Is the start of his writing career, the start of the success that he's going to build upon for the next few decades, he almost destroys it because he winds up becoming an alcoholic and a drug addict. And so this is what, again, great writing, this is what it's like being an alcoholic. Telling an alcoholic to control his drinking is like telling a guy suffering from the world's most cataclysmic case of diarrhea to control his shitting. My nights during the last five years of my drinking always ended with the same ritual. I'd pour any beers left in the refrigerator down the sink. If I didn't, they'd talk to me as I lay in bed until I got up and had another and another and one more. And he winds up doing cocaine, alcohol, Xanax, volume.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A month and this man I'd met only once face to face was telling me that I'd won the lottery. The strength ran out of my legs. I didn't fall exactly, but I kind of whooshed down to a sitting position there in the doorway. Are you sure? I asked him. He said he was. I asked him to say the number again, very slowly and verily clearly so I could be sure I hadn't misunderstood. He said the number was a four followed by five zeros. We talked for another half hour, and I don't remember a single word of what we said. When the conversation was over, I tried to call Tabby at her mother's, but she had already left. I walked back and forth through the apartment, exploding with good news and without an ear to hear it. I was shaking all over. When she came home I took her by the shoulders. I told her about the paperback sale. She didn't appear to understand. I told her again. Tabby looked over my”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Earlier, and they were talking about what do we do? Our mom is dying of cancer. Okay, so he says one Sunday, not long after that call, I got another one from Bill Thompson. I was alone in the apartment. Are you sitting down, Bill asked? No, I said. Do I need to? You might, he said. The paperback rights to carry went to signet books for four hundred thousand dollars. I stood there in the doorway, casting the same shadow as always, but I couldn't talk. I hadn't heard him, right? I couldn't have. The idea allowed me to find my voice again at least. Did you say it went forty thousand dollars? four hundred thousand dollars, he said. Under the rules of the road, meaning the contract I'd sign, two hundred K of it is yours. Congratulations, Steve. I was still standing in the doorway looking across the living room toward our bedroom and the crib where Joe slept. Our place rented for nine.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And this is the part where it hits you because at this point you've spent a few hours inside the mine of Stephen King and you're reliving how much struggle that he had to get through and how many times he was given the opportunity to quit and he refused. So, this is a phone call that's going to change his life. And it needed to come because not only he's doing really poorly financially, but his mom is dying of cancer at the same time. And he just got off the phone with his brother.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd read that Mario Puzzo had just scored a huge advance for paperback rights to the godfather four hundred thousand dollars according to the newspaper. But I didn't believe Carrie would fetch anywhere near that. Tabby asked if I thought the book would find a paperback publisher. I told her I thought the chances were pretty good, maybe seven or eight and ten. She asked how much it might bring. I said my best guess would be somewhere between ten and sixty thousand dollars. So he would get half that. That's the contract he has. So if it was 10, he'd get 5. If it was 60, you'd get 30. $60,000. He sounded almost shocked. Is that much even possible? I said it was not likely, perhaps, but possible. Probably just pie in the sky, but it was a night for dreaming.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bill Thompson had sent it after trying to call and discovering that the kings no longer had a phone. Congratulations it read. Carey officially a double day book is twenty five hundred dollars advance okay. The future lies ahead Love Bill So then they wind up celebrating they have a little bit of champagne maybe a cigarette something like that and then they just have a conversation like you know his wife's kind of curious like what does this mean like just could there be like a future in this and so This is the note, and I wrote this note to myself after I read this section. And it's like, maybe just maybe there's something here, a future different from our present.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He winds up writing the manuscript. He sends it off. And this is a much needed break. This is the first one, okay? The manuscript of Carrie went off to Double Day. That's a publisher where I had made a friend named William Thompson. I pretty much forgot about it and moved on with my life. The intercon came on, so he's still teaching at school. He's got a free period and he's just sitting in the teacher's lounge grading papers. He says the intercame on in the office and asked if I was there. I said I was. And she asked me to come to the office. I had a phone call. My wife, remember, they don't have a phone at home. Okay? Either too poor to have a phone at home. So he's really worried. I hurried. My heart beating hard. Tabby would have had to dress the kids in their boots and jackets to use the neighbor's phone, and I could think of only two reasons why she might have done so. Either Joe or Naomi had broken a leg, or I had sold Carrie. My wife, sounding out of breath but deliriously happy, read me a telegram”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The next night when it came home, Tabby had the pages. She spied them while emptying my wastebasket, had shaken the cigarette ashes off the crumpled balls of paper, smoothed them out, and sat down to read them. She wanted me to go on with it, she said. You've got something here, she said. I really think you do. And this is what Carrie taught him, and this is going to repeat this over and over again in the book Variations of this same idea. The realization that stopping a piece of work just because it's hard, either emotionally or imaginatively is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all your managing is to shovel shit.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Husband, I smile and I think there's someone who knows. Writing is a lonely job, having someone who believes in you makes a lot of difference. They don't have to make speeches, just believing is usually enough. Goes on for several years. He has the idea for Carrie. This is his first hit. Not only does the novel. He writes it the beginning of it, he hated it, and he threw it in the trash His wife takes it out”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“By most Friday afternoons, I felt that I had spent a week with jumper cables clamped to my brain. If I ever came close to despairing about my future as a writer, it was then. I could see myself 30 years on wearing the same shabby tweed coats with patches on the elbows, pop belly rolling over my gap khakis from too much beer. I'd have a cigarette cough from too many packs of cigarettes, thicker glasses, more dandruff, and in my desk drawer six or seven unfinished manuscripts which I would take out and tinker with from time to time usually when drunk. This is fantastic writing, and of course I'd lie to myself, telling myself there was still time. It wasn't too late. My wife made a crucial difference during those years. Tabby never voiced a single doubt. Her support was a constant, one of the few good things I could take as a given, and whenever I see a first novel dedicated to a wife or a husband.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, this goes on for many, many years. I'm going to still read to you. Really, the note, this is the struggle and the belief and support of his wife. We were living in a trailer. I was driving a Buick with transmission problems we couldn't afford to fix. We had no telephone. We simply couldn't afford the monthly charge. I wasn't having much success with my own writing. Think about that, where he's at in his life. Put yourself in his shoes. In his mind, you know there's times in his mind it's telling him give it up Steve give it up this isn't going to work you can't be a writer no one's buying your stuff give up The bigger deal was that for the first time in my life, writing was hard. The problem was the teaching. So now he's doing laundry in the summer break, but he's teaching, I think, high school or something like that.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Here, $75 here when you could, right? And then one day just hits him. He's like, I don't. I can't even pay medication for my sick daughter. And you got us a lucky break, a small lucky break here. And he talks about that. Trudging from the car to our apartment building was a low point. We both knew Naomi needed the pink stuff, which is what we called liquid amoxicillin. The pink stuff was expensive, and we were broke. She was so feverish she glowed against my chest like a banked coal. When I saw there was an envelope sticking out of our mailbox, a rare Saturday delivery. I snagged it, praying it wouldn't turn out to be another bill. It wasn't. It was a check for a long story I hadn't believed would sell anywhere. The check was for five hundred dollars, easily the largest sum I'd ever received.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Short while is all about the struggle broke two kids hoping on a dream, right? Just hoping I can live the dream I want. I want to be a writer. Can I support my family doing this? From a financial point of view, two kids were probably too much too many for college grads working in a laundry and the second shift at Dunkin' Donuts. I wrote after work. I would sometimes write a little on my lunch break too. There were times when it occurred to me that I was simply repeating my mother's life. If I happen to be tired or if there were extra bills to pay and no money to pay them with, it seemed awful. I'd think this isn't the way our lives are supposed to be going. The stories I sold to men magazines were just enough to create a rough sliding margin between us and the welfare office, you know, he sees selling stories for $100 here, $50.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Treat. And so anybody that has kids knows exactly what he's talking about. Yeah, it's really, really hard. It's the greatest thing that'll ever happen to you, though. So this is his wretched job just after college. This is what I just alluded to. I couldn't find a teaching job, so I went to work at New Franklin Laundry. So the laundry is like commercial laundry. So think of stuff coming from hospitals, stuff coming from restaurants, and he's in Maine, so everybody's eating seafood. By the time the tablecloths reached me, they stanked to high heaven and were often boiling with maggots. The maggots who try to crawl up your arms as you loaded the washers. It was as if the little fuckers knew you were planning to cook them. The maggots were bad, the smell of decomposing clam and lobster meat was even worse. Hospital sheets and linens were worse. These also crawled with maggots in the summertime, but it was blood they were feeding on instead of lobster meat. So this is all about the struggle. All the highlights I'm going to give you for the next.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is him on being a father. When Tabby went into labor with my son, I was with our son, I was at a drive-in movie theater with a friend. We were on the third movie and the second six-pack when the guy in the office broke in with an announcement. This is when there were still poll speakers in those days. So if you've ever seen an old school drive-through theaters, you have this portable speaker, every car has its own speaker, so you can hear the movie, and it's attached to your car. And so it says the manager's announcement thus rang through the entire parking lot. Steve King, please go home. Your wife is in labor. Steve King, please go home. Your wife is going to have the baby. As I drove our old Plymouth towards the exit, a couple of hundred horns blared a salute. Many people flick their headlights on and off, bathing me in a stuttery glow. When I got home, Tabby was calm and packed. She gave birth to Joe less than three hours later. He entered the world easily. For the next five years or so, nothing else about Joe was easy, but he was a treat. Both of them were really.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So him and his wife, if they get married, they're still really young. This is Stephen King writing about being a father. And it just blew my mind. I did not know this before I read the book. Like how much he struggled. They were living in a trailer. His wife was working at Dunkin' of Donuts. He's cleaning maggots out of laundry. I'll get to her in a minute. They're trying to support two kids on no money. And so when he hits that break, like you feel it when you read this book, like I had tears in my eyes when he finally hits with Carrie because you know how the struggle and all the crap he went through. And I want to run over my future point, but it sticks out of my mind. They're renting a crappy little apartment for like $90 a month and somebody buys the paperback rights to carry for $400,000. That is going to come from a guy that was so poor he couldn't even buy medicine for his sick daughter. This is crazy.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I want to pull out one paragraph here. He's talking about this poem that his wife wrote. And this is going to be a weird thought that spawned in my mind, but come with me here, okay? And really, this is what Stephen King believes. Like he's a professional, right? It's not, I'm not just going to sit around waiting for this inspiration. He's like, no, I'm going to show up every day. And if I show up every day and I put in the work, the inspiration comes, right? You don't just sit there and then strike of lightning and then I have to go right. It's like, no, you show up every day and you do it. And so he says there was something, there was also a work ethic in that poem that I liked, something that suggested that writing poems, our stories, our essays, or I would add anything else, had as much in common with sweeping the floor as with mythy moments of revelation.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Could utter such a wonderful, unafraid laugh. Her name was Tabitha Spruce. We got married a year and a half later. We're still married. It worked. Our marriage has outlasted all of the world's leaders except for Castro, and if we keep talking, arguing, making love, and dancing to the Ramones, it'll probably keep working.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sold other stories previously to this, but they had bought in a total of just $65 altogether. This was three times that. And in a single stroke, it took my breath away. It did. I was rich. So he's gotten this idea that when he's writing, he talks about the ideal reader, IR. And he's saying if you're creating something, you should create for one person in mind. He writes for his wife in mind. That's his ideal reader. I would say I would compare this a lot with if you're creating a product. If Stephen Spielberg said, I'm the audience, Steve Jobs and his team made the iPod for themselves. So you might be your ideal, you know, the person to use your product or service. He just happens to use that for his craft, which is writing. But listen to how he tells the story of getting and staying married. And again, he does this really, really rapidly. He meets his wife in college. They're still married to this day. One day in late June of that summer, a bunch of us library guys had lunch on the grass behind the university bookstore, sitting between Paulo Silva and Eddie Marsh was a trim girl with a raucous laugh, red tinted hair, and the prettiest legs I've ever seen. I hadn't run across her in the library, and I didn't believe a college student”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just put the book down. You're going to fail. This idea, just like he said, the very opening, he's like, how'd you write so book? How did you write so many books? One word at a time. Most people give up at everything. We are not like most people. Finally, someone was challenging me, keeping me in over my head, encouraging and expecting me to pull myself up quickly. I feel the same thing when you read Stephen King's book. He holds you to a very high standard. You're going to go at this every day, and you're not going to give up is what Stephen King's going to tell us. I was learning so fast. I felt in Spielberg said the same thing last week. I was learning so fast, I felt like an adrenaline rush. When you get, which you get when you're playing a video game, he tossed every fact at me and it made me prove that I got it in one, three hour lesson that morning, he taught me a full semester of Berkeley's harmony courses. In our next four lessons, remember Derek shows up and he doesn't quit, right? This guy winds up selling a CD baby to company for 25 or 30 million dollars, something like that, a few decades into the future. In our next four lessons, he taught me the next four semesters of harmony and arrangement.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“King is going to take this idea that he's learning when he's probably 17, and he's talking about for the rest of the book. He repeats this over and over again. So he says, write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. These are metaphors, okay? I mean, they're also, he means that literally and figuratively. I guess that's the better way to put that. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words. But then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and you get it right as right as you can anyway, it belongs to anyone who wants to read it or criticize it. If you're very lucky, more people will want to read it than criticize it.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then Stephen King says, I won't do it again. He laughed. If that's true, you'll never have to work for a living. You can do this instead, meaning right. Do I have to explain any of these marks? No, I said. Now we go back to the advice that he gets that taught him more than in ten minutes than anybody else than all the classes he took, right? When you write a story, you're telling yourself the story, he said. When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story. So let me read that to you again. When you write a story, you're telling yourself the story, he said. When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story. And let me pause here because while I'm reading this to you, another thought just popped in my mind. It might be, I don't know if I've been clear or not, but like, why is this so important, especially for entrepreneurs, investors, creative people? People are doing anything different? Because the power of learning, the storyteller is the most powerful person in the world, right?”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I took my fair share of English lit classes and my fair share of composition fiction and poetry classes in college. But John Gold taught me more than any of them. And in no more than 10 minutes, remember that 10-minute part for the story I'm going to talk about no speed limit, okay? So you taught me more than all these classes and he taught it to me in 10 minutes. When he finished marking my copy in the manner indicated above, he looked up and there's pictures of the actual what he did to this if you want to see it. Obviously read the book. It's fantastic. When he finished making my copy in the manner indicated, marking my copy in the manner indicated above, he looked up and saw something on my face. I think he must have mistaken it for horror. It wasn't. It was pure revelation. Why, I wonder, didn't English teachers ever do this? And he's just essentially crossing out the stuff that is unnecessary, that's not advancing the story. And so he said, I only took out the bad parts, you know, Gold said. Most of it's pretty good. I know, I said, meaning both things.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So while he's still in high school, he gets the opportunity to get a job writing about sports at the local newspaper, even though he doesn't know anything about sports, but it actually teaches him a lot writing. So what's so fascinating about what's happening to him is we've seen this happen in a few other occasions. So he winds up learning more at the newspaper about writing than he does at school. Ernest Hemingway was very similar. He credited his time. I think he was in St. Louis. I forgot where he was. He was just giving basic wire news reports, right? Like, no really opinion just here. This is the facts. This is the stuff that happened. And he talked about later on that that's where he learned to write short sentences and learned to have really clear writing. And if you ever read Hemingway, especially the old man in the sea, there's just no fat on any of his sentences. And so the same things about that happened to Stephen King here. And then I want to read two other things to you because Dr. Seuss, when I read his biography, Frank Capra.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's another important sentence there. If you write or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, someone will try to make you feel lousy about it. That's all. I'm not editorializing. I'm just trying to give you the facts as I see them.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so this is what the principle told him. Why what I don't understand, Stevie, she said, is why you write junk like this in the first place. You're talented. Why do you waste your abilities? And then this is a fantastic paragraph. And this is going to echo this thing you and I have talked about over and over again. Sometimes critics are right, sometimes they're wrong. Doesn't matter. They're constant. That is his point that he's saying here. To her credit, the question was not entirely rhetorical. But I had no answer to give. I was ashamed. I have spent a good many years since too many, I think, being ashamed about what I write, how crazy is that statement. Think about that. $350 million copies sold, and I'm still spending four decades sometimes being ashamed by what I write. There's that creepy self-doubt, right? I think I was 40 before I realized that almost every writer who has ever published a line has been accused of by someone of wasting his or her God given talent.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wouldn't just write this masterpiece. I could also print it using the drum press in our basement and sell copies at school. As it was conceived, so was it done. And he has access to printing equipment because his older brother, they kind of put it together in like a rough slipshod kind of manner because he would produce a family newsletter and like a newspaper actually. And so he's just using his older brother's printing equipment. So this is the pen and pennim that turned out to be my first bestseller. I took the entire print run to school in my book bag. By the end of lunch hour, I had sold three dozen and was walking around in a kind of a dream. It all seemed too good to be true. It was when the school day ended at two o'clock I was summoned to the principal's office where I was told I couldn't turn the school into a marketplace.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And forth late at night as young, I guess you could say young kid, young man or whatever the case is. So he says on the long hitch home that night, I had a wonderful idea. I would turn the pit and the pendulum, the movie he just seen, into a book.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So some of his main influences at the very beginning was magazines, their version of, I guess, newsletters, comic books, but also movies. So he winds up going to see, he would spend a lot of time just like David Geffin, just like Steven Spielberg. He'd spend all day seeing these like double and triple features, right? And so he's coming back one late at night or one night, one time late at night, maybe is what I'm trying to say there. And he has this idea. He's like, well, the movie I just saw was great. Why don't I write in this kind of, it just hit me now that I'm trying to talk to you about this. But it's funny because now most of his books go from books to movies. In this case, he's going from movie to book. So this is a story about selling his first book and then realizing there's always going to be naysayers. So he's like, I'm going to go home and I'm going to write my own version of the movie I just saw. And what's pretty crazy is he's what 15 at the time somewhere around there. And he's having the, he doesn't have a car and they have no money. So he hitchhikes everywhere back.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Cool. I'll keep writing. When I got the rejection slip from AHMM, that's Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. I pounded a nail into the wall, wrote happy stamps, which is the name of the story, on the rejection slip, and poked it on the nail. I felt pretty good, actually. When you're still too young to shave, optimism is a perfectly legitimate response to failure. By the time I was fourteen, the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“idea is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience. A new idea is nothing but the outcome of an earlier intellectual experience. I love that. Okay, so now we're going to get into, he loves to write from an early age. He goes from copying comic books and a little short stories to writing some of his own. He's somewhere in his early teenage years at this point in the story. And he sends off, he writes a bunch of stories and then sends them off and tries to sell them to magazines that he likes. And one magazine he loved was Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. And this is again where we're going to see the combination of, there's a lot of overlap. And maybe it's just because of that book. I just finished it. It books on my mind. But between Stephen Spielberg and Stephen King, Stephen King is also obsessed with movies as well. But the reason I bring that up is because Alfred Hitchcock was one of the main influences on Stephen Spielberg. And it's Stephen King had also, Hitchcock also served as an influence for Stephen King. And so the note of myself in this section is another rejection letter.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so Stephen weaves all these little stories, these anecdotes about his childhood and his early life into his thoughts on writing as well. And so this is what he says, where ideas come from, excuse me, and what our job is. So he says, let's get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no idea dump, no story central, no island of the buried bestsellers. Good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky. Two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job is to find these, not to your job isn't to find these ideas, but to recognize them when they show up. So I'm going to go back to one sentence in that paragraph. He says two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. One of my favorite quotes of Albert Einstein because he believed in that same idea. He says, listen, a new idea.”
2021-10-10 · Founders · #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source