I Admire Stephen King

I Admire Stephen King · 4 February 2023

Stephen King
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by FlickreviewR
Licensed under CC BY 2.0

I admire Stephen King. So much so that I want to be like Stephen King. Wait. That’s not quite right. I want to write like Stephen King. No. That’s not quite right either. I want to be as successful as Stephen King. No. I guess I was right the first time. I admire Stephen King. At least in some ways.

Even though I admire Stephen King, I do not want to be like Stephen King. I do not want to write like him. I do not want to be as successful as him. Nor do I aspire to be Stephen King. In fact, I do not know Stephen King except what I see through his books. And as fascinated as I am by what I see there, I do not want to be him.

The reason that I am even thinking about Stephen King is because I saw a new book by him. I read the jacket and was intrigued. Parallel universes or different worlds are accessed through a shed behind somebody’s house or something like that. And as farfetched as the book sounds, King’s writing always sucks me into the story. Or rather, it usually does. There are a few of his stories that I have not read. And there are a few that I never intend to read. But still, the way he writes makes me want to read the next line. And the next. And the next.

I suppose when it comes right down to it, there is really only one word of advice I would like to take from Stephen King. Write the truth.

Now, that was not exactly what King said in his book, On Writing, but it is the essence of what he said. He said that when you write, the words need to sound true. Even if the story is fiction, it still needs to sound true. The characters and the settings and the plot and everything all together needs to sound true. Writing is like building a house. If the foundation and the walls are not true, the house falls down. If the characters and the settings are not true, the plot falls to pieces. The story cannot be told. It is not true.

I do not think that Stephen King said it quite that way, but that is how it makes sense to me. You need to build your house on the rock instead of on the sand. It does not matter that the house you are building as a writer is a story. Even a fictional story.

So that is what I do. I write fiction that sounds true. I write non-fiction as true to the sources that I can. I want the words on the pages of all my writing to be true. At the very least true to the story. True to me. And true to who I am and who I serve.

I will never be a writer like Stephen King. I will never be as successful or as prolific or as widely read. And that is okay. Like I said in the beginning, I do not really want to be like Stephen King. But I do admire Stephen King.

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