Master of Horror & possibly the Universe
I had forgotten why I love Stephen King.
Yes, we all know about his famous slap down of Stephenie Meyer. (Or in case you didn’t he said that she has no talent. I think he stopped short of calling her a hack, however. And of course, he called JK Rowling the real deal.)
But what about the Master of Horror? What’s been going on with his writing?
The last thing I read by Stephen King was his writers’ manifesto On Writing. More like an autobiography than a writer’s how to, it explores little nuggets of Mr. King’s dos and don’ts for writers while espousing his own road to success (and one very grim, horrifying road accident that almost killed him.)
I came away from this book thinking
1) adverbs ending in -ly are evil
2) I’m not a real writer because sometimes I lose the passion
3) Oh God, please don’t let Stephen King slam me like Stephenie Meyer
4) Oh yeah that first 10% of the book you wrote that you were so precious about – kiss it goodbye
It was daunting and a little scary, but I soon forgot about it as I got on with the work of writing my first book.
And things began to progress nicely with “the book”. It started to flow- I could write 10-12 pages in a day and not be tired. I wanted to write more and say more and I had all these ideas in my head. I thought to myself, By Jove, I’m actually pretty good at this writing lark. I think I even got an itsy bit arrogant about it – the public wouldn’t even know what hit them!
Well, that notion faded a little as some of the later chapters became harder to write, but I still didn’t lose that edge of confidence. Yes, there was a lot of paranormal fiction out there (thankfully, no vampires here), but I would be better. I was perfectly suited for this genre. After all, I was a morbid little girl fascinated with witches, vampires, and ogres who grew up to be a Goth for almost twenty years. I knew the supernatural. I lived it.
That was until I went back and started to re-read my favorite Stephen King novel, The Stand. If I was the Planet Earth, then Stephen King was the Sun and the center of the fucking universe. (I used the F-bomb in honor of Mr. King. He uses it alot.)
Who could argue with passages like this
On Stu Redman’s wife dying of uterine cancer –
The marriage had been the best time, and it had only lasted eighteen months. The womb of his young wife had borne a single dark and malignant child.
Or the colorful, local dialects sprinkled with some of the most imaginative curses ever – Christ on a pony, Moses in the bullrushes, and the list goes on.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg as they say. The descriptions of Arnette, Texas, Hap’s gas station, the menacing atmosphere as everyone gets sick makes me want to cry out, “I’m not worthy!” And I’m only a few chapters into a very and I mean very long book (try 1,153 pages).
How does he do it? Will I ever be 1/10th the size of that sun? (At the moment you could fit 1,259,712 of me inside Stephen King if the logic follows).
But I digress. Stephen King is a writing God. And if I’m every lucky enough to sit down and have a cup of coffee with him, I just pray to the cosmic forces that there’s no talk of vampires . . .