Stephen King Writes On July 4 Without Guilt — And You Can, Too
No law says you can’t open your Mac when everyone else is making potato salad
Americans who earn their living by writing — whether they prefer fiction or nonfiction — tend to take a harsher view of Stephen King’s On Writing than do students or other newbies.
I’ve been doing research for a Medium story on why this is so — and on how King’s advice can hurt you if you’re a rookie — and it’s included spending time with a later edition of the book than the one I read when it came out in 2000.
That reading hasn’t substantially changed my view that On Writing is the most overrated book on its subject in the past quarter century. But King offers a few enlightening facts for writers at any level. One is that he once told an interviewer he wrote every day except for Christmas, the Fourth of July, and his birthday (in part because he didn’t want to sound like “a workaholic dweeb”). In my 10th anniversary edition of On Writing, he clarifies:
“The truth is that when I’m writing, I write every day, workaholic dweeb or not. That includes Christmas, the Fourth, and my birthday….For me, not working is the real work. When I’m writing, it’s all the playground, and the three worst hours I ever spent there were still pretty damned…
