A Stephen King Blurb On Writing
I haven’t read Stephen King’s book On Writing but in my brief travels of exploring him on Wikipedia after reading The Stand, It, and The Green Mile I came across something he said that gave me a little pause. King wrote that if you want to be a writer you need to be reading and writing from 4 to 6 hours a day. In other words, it’s a full-time vocation. So far, I mostly write to get a little experience writing and to exercise the parts of the brain needed for better writing to come out. Trying to find my voice and all that, seeing if I have something to say.
However.
I cannot see myself reading and writing from half to a full work-day. I can read many hours, sure, but adding writing to that and I lose all the time I have for other things. Therefore, I decided I cannot do it and will relegate writing to a small side-gig of amusement and exploration instead of attempting to make writing a full-time gig. I’ve turned down enough Textbroker work to know I won’t make it as a full-time writer. At least I exercised the demons, as should you, by giving writing a go.
But, then again, is Stephen King right? On the one hand, I don’t care for his novels, I find them to be very bad in comparison to a lot of other novels I’ve read. I felt like his stories were a ton of tiny stories woven together. There were too many side trips, which distracted me from the whole, and before I knew it I had a hard time grasping what his book was working toward. On the other hand, he is worth around $500 million and still writes. He can’t see himself not writing. I think that might be the real test, whether or not you continue to write a lot even though you never need to work a day again in your life.
Being wealthy doesn’t scale anything in your writing. It’s not like you suddenly have access to better tools to make the best books. Even if you can advertise more and get more people to read you, it doesn’t make you a better author. This reminds me of one of the special things about writing, which is, writing can be exquisite from anyone. It doesn’t matter your wealth, your background, your language, your expertise or experience, what matters is how well you communicate and if what you have to say is interesting.
For me, I will stop writing when I no longer have anything to say. Maybe my writing will transform into something I am not anticipating. Writing at least focuses your mind and develops your thinking so you can better express yourself. There’s no downside to expressing yourself better.
It’s difficult not to take Stephen King’s advice seriously. He is, after all, extremely successful. But can we still question his wisdom? I badly want to say we can, but unfortunately, there are times when you have to keep your mouth shut. I may not make it as a writer if I put 4–6 hours a day into writing, but you may make it, especially if you focus yourself on money-making writing, like how to write cheap thriller novels you can self-publish on Amazon, or how to write a bunch of fluffy how-to-make-money posts here on Medium, or grinding away at Textbroker, getting to a five-star rating, and then grinding some more.
I don’t focus myself like that because I am already focused on learning web development and writing is more of a hobby, but some people do grind away at freelance writing. I also suffer from a condition I shall call failtimephobia: when you are afraid to sink hundreds or thousands of hours into a career change because what if it doesn’t work out? I speak from experience, of course, having attempted several career changes, from car salesman, mortgage salesman, HVAC salesman, editor, and now web developer. A lot of my failtimephobias were prompted because my college degree was in a field that also required certification (education) and, unfortunately for me, that meant the ability to even attempt the career expired along with my certification (I moved countries and that doesn’t put a hold on the timer for your certification expiration).
The last thing I want to say about King’s advice on 4–6 hours is he is trying to scare you (no pun/coincidence intended). If he said an hour a day many of us would be writing garbage every day of the year and think we were going to be successful. If he said two hours we would still see it as doable. Four hours though? Six? Unless you don’t have any bills or responsibilities, that’s going to be difficult to maintain. You’re not supposed to be able to maintain that unless you have writing in your blood. I go for days without writing because I’m burnt out from work, family, and other projects. I would have to post three to four times on Medium a day in order to move the needle. Maybe one day for me, maybe one day for you, but it’s good to ponder the weight of work it would take to scratch the surface. If you’re going to do something your best bet is to go all in. Or, scrap his advice entirely because it may be no different than telling someone they need a college degree to get a good job these days. It could be outdated advice.
