Text 13703, 269 rader
Skriven 2005-06-24 21:31:54 av Ed Connell (1:379/1.6)
  Kommentar till text 13697 av Stan Hardegree (1:379/1.2)
Ärende: Re: single payer better
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Hey, Stan.

 JB>>> You attending the Fest this year ?  If so, when are you
 JB>>> getting there ?

 EC>> I intend to.

 SH> Hoo-rah!

Thanks.

Thought you might be interested in this...

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Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully: in Ten Minutes
by Stephen King
I. The First Introduction
THAT'S RIGHT. I know it sounds like an ad for some sleazy writers' school, 
but I really am going to tell you everything you need to pursue a successful 
and financially rewarding career writing fiction, and I really am going to 
do it in ten minutes, which is exactly how long it took me to learn. It will 
actually take you twenty minutes or so to read this essay, however, because 
I have to tell you a story, and then I have to write a second introduction. 
But these, I argue, should not count in the ten minutes.

II. The Story, or, How Stephen King Learned to Write
When I was a sophomore in high school, I did a sophomoric thing which got me 
in a pot of fairly hot water, as sophomoric didoes often do. I wrote and 
published a small satiric newspaper called The Village Vomit. In this little 
paper I lampooned a number of teachers at Lisbon (Maine) High School, where 
I was under instruction. These were not very gentle lampoons; they ranged 
from the scatological to the downright cruel.

Eventually, a copy of this little newspaper found its way into the hands of 
a faculty member, and since I had been unwise enough to put my name on it (a 
fault, some critics argue, of which I have still not been entirely cured), I 
was brought into the office. The sophisticated satirist had by that time 
reverted to what he really was: a fourteen-year-old kid who was shaking in 
his boots and wondering if he was going to get a suspension ... what we 
called "a three-day vacation" in those dim days of 1964.

I wasn't suspended. I was forced to make a number of apologies - they were 
warranted, but they still tasted like dog-dirt in my mouth - and spent a 
week in detention hall. And the guidance counselor arranged what he no doubt 
thought of as a more constructive channel for my talents. This was a job - 
contingent upon the editor's approval - writing sports for the Lisbon 
Enterprise, a twelve-page weekly of the sort with which any small-town 
resident will be familiar. This editor was the man who taught me everything 
I know about writing in ten minutes. His name was John Gould - not the famed 
New England humorist or the novelist who wrote The Greenleaf Fires, but a 
relative of both, I believe.

He told me he needed a sports writer and we could "try each other out" if I 
wanted.

I told him I knew more about advanced algebra than I did sports.

Gould nodded and said, "You'll learn."

I said I would at least try to learn. Gould gave me a huge roll of yellow 
paper and promised me a wage of 1/2? per word. The first two pieces I wrote 
had to do with a high school basketball game in which a member of my school 
team broke the Lisbon High scoring record. One of these pieces was straight 
reportage. The second was a feature article.

I brought them to Gould the day after the game, so he'd have them for the 
paper, which came out Fridays. He read the straight piece, made two minor 
corrections, and spiked it. Then he started in on the feature piece with a 
large black pen and taught me all I ever needed to know about my craft. I 
wish I still had the piece - it deserves to be framed, editorial corrections 
and all - but I can remember pretty well how it looked when he had finished 
with it. Here's an example:

(note: this is before the edit marks indicated on King's original copy)

Last night, in the well-loved gymnasium of Lisbon High School, partisans and 
Jay Hills fans alike were stunned by an athletic performance unequaled in 
school history: Bob Ransom, known as "Bullet" Bob for both his size and 
accuracy, scored thirty-seven points. He did it with grace and speed ... and 
he did it with an odd courtesy as well, committing only two personal fouls 
in his knight-like quest for a record which has eluded Lisbon thinclads 
since 1953....

(after edit marks)

Last night, in the Lisbon High School gymnasium, partisans and Jay Hills 
fans alike were stunned by an athletic performance unequaled in school 
history: Bob Ransom scored thirty-seven points. He did it with grace and 
speed ... and he did it with an odd courtesy as well, committing only two 
personal fouls in his quest for a record which has eluded Lisbon's 
basketball team since 1953....

When Gould finished marking up my copy in the manner I have indicated above, 
he looked up and must have seen something on my face. I think he must have 
thought it was horror, but it was not: it was revelation.

"I only took out the bad parts, you know," he said. "Most of it's pretty 
good."

"I know," I said, meaning both things: yes, most of it was good, and yes, he 
had only taken out the bad parts. "I won't do it again."

"If that's true," he said, "you'll never have to work again. You can do this 
for a living." Then he threw back his head and laughed.

And he was right; I am doing this for a living, and as long as I can keep 
on, I don't expect ever to have to work again.

III. The Second Introduction
All of what follows has been said before. If you are interested enough in 
writing to be a purchaser of this magazine, you will have either heard or 
read all (or almost all) of it before. Thousands of writing courses are 
taught across the United States each year; seminars are convened; guest 
lecturers talk, then answer questions, then drink as many gin and tonics as 
their expense-fees will allow, and it all boils down to what follows.

I am going to tell you these things again because often people will only 
listen - really listen - to someone who makes a lot of money doing the thing 
he's talking about. This is sad but true. And I told you the story above not 
to make myself sound like a character out of a Horatio Alger novel but to 
make a point: I saw, I listened, and I learned. Until that day in John 
Gould's little office, I had been writing first drafts of stories which 
might run 2,500 words. The second drafts were apt to run 3,300 words. 
Following that day, my 2,500-word first drafts became 2,200-word second 
drafts. And two years after that, I sold the first one.

So here it is, with all the bark stripped off. It'll take ten minutes to 
read, and you can apply it right away ... if you listen.

IV. Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully
1. Be talented
This, of course, is the killer. What is talent? I can hear someone shouting, 
and here we are, ready to get into a discussion right up there with "what is 
the meaning of life?" for weighty pronouncements and total uselessness. For 
the purposes of the beginning writer, talent may as well be defined as 
eventual success - publication and money. If you wrote something for which 
someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn't bounce, and 
if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.

Now some of you are really hollering. Some of you are calling me one crass 
money-fixated creep. And some of you are calling me bad names. Are you 
calling Harold Robbins talented? someone in one of the Great English 
Departments of America is screeching. V.C. Andrews? Theodore Dreiser? Or 
what about you, you dyslexic moron?

Nonsense. Worse than nonsense, off the subject. We're not talking about good 
or bad here. I'm interested in telling you how to get your stuff published, 
not in critical judgments of who's good or bad. As a rule the critical 
judgments come after the check's been spent, anyway. I have my own opinions, 
but most times I keep them to myself. People who are published steadily and 
are paid for what they are writing may be either saints or trollops, but 
they are clearly reaching a great many someones who want what they have. 
Ergo, they are communicating. Ergo, they are talented. The biggest part of 
writing successfully is being talented, and in the context of marketing, the 
only bad writer is one who doesn't get paid. If you're not talented, you 
won't succeed. And if you're not succeeding, you should know when to quit.

When is that? I don't know. It's different for each writer. Not after six 
rejection slips, certainly, nor after sixty. But after six hundred? Maybe. 
After six thousand? My friend, after six thousand pinks, it's time you tried 
painting or computer programming.

Further, almost every aspiring writer knows when he is getting warmer - you 
start getting little jotted notes on your rejection slips, or personal 
letters . . . maybe a commiserating phone call. It's lonely out there in the 
cold, but there are encouraging voices ... unless there is nothing in your 
words which warrants encouragement. I think you owe it to yourself to skip 
as much of the self-illusion as possible. If your eyes are open, you'll know 
which way to go ... or when to turn back.

2. Be neat
Type. Double-space. Use a nice heavy white paper, never that erasable 
onion-skin stuff. If you've marked up your manuscript a lot, do another 
draft.

3. Be self-critical
If you haven't marked up your manuscript a lot, you did a lazy job. Only God 
gets things right the first time. Don't be a slob.

4. Remove every extraneous word
You want to get up on a soapbox and preach? Fine. Get one and try your local 
park. You want to write for money? Get to the point. And if you remove all 
the excess garbage and discover you can't find the point, tear up what you 
wrote and start all over again . . . or try something new.

5. Never look at a reference book while doing a first draft
You want to write a story? Fine. Put away your dictionary, your 
encyclopedias, your World Almanac, and your thesaurus. Better yet, throw 
your thesaurus into the wastebasket. The only things creepier than a 
thesaurus are those little paperbacks college students too lazy to read the 
assigned novels buy around exam time. Any word you have to hunt for in a 
thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule. You think 
you might have misspelled a word? O.K., so here is your choice: either look 
it up in the dictionary, thereby making sure you have it right - and 
breaking your train of thought and the writer's trance in the bargain - or 
just spell it phonetically and correct it later. Why not? Did you think it 
was going to go somewhere? And if you need to know the largest city in 
Brazil and you find you don't have it in your head, why not write in Miami, 
or Cleveland? You can check it ... but later. When you sit down to write, 
write. Don't do anything else except go to the bathroom, and only do that if 
it absolutely cannot be put off.

6. Know the markets
Only a dimwit would send a story about giant vampire bats surrounding a high 
school to McCall's. Only a dimwit would send a tender story about a mother 
and daughter making up their differences on Christmas Eve to Playboy ... but 
people do it all the time. I'm not exaggerating; I have seen such stories in 
the slush piles of the actual magazines. If you write a good story, why send 
it out in an ignorant fashion? Would you send your kid out in a snowstorm 
dressed in Bermuda shorts and a tank top? If you like science fiction, read 
the magazines. If you want to write confession stories, read the magazines. 
And so on. It isn't just a matter of knowing what's right for the present 
story; you can begin to catch on, after awhile, to overall rhythms, 
editorial likes and dislikes, a magazine's entire slant. Sometimes your 
reading can influence the next story, and create a sale.

7. Write to entertain
Does this mean you can't write "serious fiction"? It does not. Somewhere 
along the line pernicious critics have invested the American reading and 
writing public with the idea that entertaining fiction and serious ideas do 
not overlap. This would have surprised Charles Dickens, not to mention Jane 
Austen, John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, Bernard Malamud, and hundreds of 
others. But your serious ideas must always serve your story, not the other 
way around. I repeat: if you want to preach, get a soapbox.

8. Ask yourself frequently, "Am I having fun?"
The answer needn't always be yes. But if it's always no, it's time for a new 
project or a new career.

9. How to evaluate criticism
Show your piece to a number of people - ten, let us say. Listen carefully to 
what they tell you. Smile and nod a lot. Then review what was said very 
carefully. If your critics are all telling you the same thing about some 
facet of your story - a plot twist that doesn't work, a character who rings 
false, stilted narrative, or half a dozen other possibles - change that 
facet. It doesn't matter if you really liked that twist of that character; 
if a lot of people are telling you something is wrong with you piece, it is. 
If seven or eight of them are hitting on that same thing, I'd still suggest 
changing it. But if everyone - or even most everyone - is criticizing 
something different, you can safely disregard what all of them say.

10. Observe all rules for proper submission
Return postage, self-addressed envelope, all of that.

11. An agent? Forget it. For now
Agents get 10% of monies earned by their clients. 10% of nothing is nothing. 
Agents also have to pay the rent. Beginning writers do not contribute to 
that or any other necessity of life. Flog your stories around yourself. If 
you've done a novel, send around query letters to publishers, one by one, 
and follow up with sample chapters and/or the manuscript complete. And 
remember Stephen King's First Rule of Writers and Agents, learned by bitter 
personal experience: You don't need one until you're making enough for 
someone to steal ... and if you're making that much, you'll be able to take 
your pick of good agents.

12. If it's bad, kill it
When it comes to people, mercy killing is against the law. When it comes to 
fiction, it is the law.
That's everything you need to know. And if you listened, you can write 
everything and anything you want. Now I believe I will wish you a pleasant 
day and sign off.

My ten minutes are up.

copyright c Stephen King

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