I recently took a Facebook test (which are rivaled in accuracy only by those found in Cosmo, btw), and it told me that my writing style is closest to that of Stephen King. I don’t suppose I’m all that surprised, as he was the first adult author I ever read (Cujo in the fourth grade). This led to a rather awkward and very brief sex-related conversation with my mother while on a cross-country Amtrack adventure.
10-Year-Old Me: Mom, what’ this word mean? (Pointing to the slang term used.)
Panicked Mother: What do you think it means?
10-Year-Old Me: Never mind.
I worked my way through most of his then-existing cannon by the time I got to college and pleasure reading went by the wayside.
Later on, I read his On Writing and was quite pleased to discover that The King of Horror and I have a pretty similar approach to the writing process. I’m one of those people who will take validation where I can find it…or pretend it exists. I haven’t read a whole lot of SK’s most recent works, with the exception of Under the Dome. I ordered and read it on my Kindle and had no idea it had been a particularly long book (Kindle doesn’t show page numbers) until other people who had read it on paper were freaking out about it.
Still, I have a soft spot for this particular author. I also happen to think that Conan O’Brien is hilarious. So, I was pleased to find this clip of King on Conan’s old Late Night show. It turns out that even though he’s a bit…well, odd…Stevie can hold his own against Conan’s comic chops.
Wow, I must have missed when that went on the air. I was a huge fan of Stephen King’s “On Writing,” and believe it is absolutely one of the best books out there for writers, whether freelance or creative. I’m also a big fan of David Morrell’s book on writing novels. Thanks for sharing this clip – I definitely enjoyed it!
Stephen King’s “On Writing” — that’s the book my literary agent recommends to aspiring fiction writers! 🙂