Thank You, Stephen King

Cristin Bruggeman is going to be a successful novelist in the not-too-distant future. Who knows – maybe she’ll even be famous with adoring fans anxiously awaiting her next work, adapted movies, and the whole nine yards.

Cristin is my daughter, and her potential to become a great writer is one thing I like to believe she inherited from dear old dad. But she is way ahead of her dad in realizing that potential. She is wrapping up rewrites on her second novel and has interest from at least one publisher. And she already has an idea about her next project.

Dad, on the other hand, still has little more than “concepts.” If things continue on their present course, “potential” will be dad’s only claim to fame.

I’m not going to delve too much into the reasons why so many years of potential have gone unfulfilled. It’s all in the past anyway; can’t change that. But it is a source of embarrassment and sadness. For a long time, I suppose, I was just uninspired, or too busy with other things like working for a living. I know that there was a time when I decided that I just wasn’t good enough, so why bother trying?

And for some years closer to the present day, I guess I looked at all those lost years, reasoned that there just wasn’t much time left, and figured there was no point in trying if I hadn’t been able to budge myself to write – really write – for the majority of my adult life. It’s like a lot of things in recent years: I’ve been in a “it’s almost over anyway, so why bother?" mode.

That’s a bad mode to be in. It affects everything in your life, and not in a good way. I thought about that a bit earlier this morning while looking at my utterly disgusting naked form in a full-length mirror (damned hotel). But I got over that pretty well after I returned to the miracle of clothing. Still, I really need to do something about that disgusting naked form, while there still might be time.

Enter Stephen King

I have never read one of Stephen King’s books. I should slap myself for that. Maybe I was just never interested much in his particular genre of horror-mystery (or mystery-horror… whatever). But he is a self-made master of the novel, and to have not read at least some of his work is a kind of literary heresy.

A few years ago, Cristin gave me one of his books as a birthday gift – not a novel, but a book he wrote about writing. I was appreciative, and I took a cursory look through some of the pages. Then it found a place on my bookshelf to collect dust along with my Russian-language texts and a few other assorted books that I thought I’d like to read but rarely have found time for.

A couple of months ago I took some small steps toward renewing my interest in writing. Maybe it was a New Year resolution thing (I don’t really remember) or maybe it was the encouragement of a friend and a feeling that I’d like to reward that encouragement with some real effort – finally. I took a serious look at my old story ideas that had been collecting virtual mold and even came up with a few new ones. After doing a little survey, I settled on one to start.

But my first foot forward was still not finding solid ground. I pumped out an opening scene and then went blank, a victim of my own writer’s block, work demands, and the lure of the Internet. As I wrote in a recent blog post about writing, I was still finding it very hard to get myself moving with the requisite sense of urgency.

About a month ago, I took that Stephen King book off the shelf and started reading. The first half of the book was a partial autobiography of King’s early years. It was interesting, but not riveting. I made slow progress with the book. But the second half has hooked me.

In the second half, King gives so much great information and advice about writing that I’ve been almost stunned. I only have a bit left to read, and I’ll probably finish it before I depart Frankfurt for Denver (I am flying to Frankfurt now). As I’ve been taking in all of King’s ideas and sage advice, I’ve resolved to do three things: 1) boil it all down to a bullet list of the things I need to put into action and keep in mind as I write, 2) create an effective writing space once I return to Kharkiv, and 3) decide who my “Ideal Reader” is.

The Advice

King discusses obvious things like the need to read a lot and write a lot (I’ve been deficient in both areas), notice what’s good or bad in other writers’ work, develop vocabulary, avoid bad constructions, and be correct but not overly anal about grammar (which I know I am – anal, that is).

He also showed me a lot about story vs. plot and how one can get so focused on outlining a plot and sketching characters that the real story gets lost. And he gives a great formula and some practical rules for doing the first draft and then the second. He talks about writing the first draft quickly with the “door closed,” letting it stew for a month or two, and then going to the second draft with the door open. Great advice.

King introduced me to the idea of the “Ideal Reader,” one particular person for whom you sort of unconsciously write the story. The Ideal Reader is the first person to read the draft when it’s ready and the one you trust most to give you the kind of feedback that helps you to make effective corrections. I think I know who my Ideal Reader is, but I have to stew on that a bit.

Anyway, Stephen King’s advice has come to me at just the right moment, a moment when I’m getting more serious about my writing than at any point in my life. It’s true that I’ve let way too much time go to waste, and there’s no telling how much time I have left, but hell, I could have been hit by a pineapple cart when I was 27. So who can say really how much time any of us has. Might was well get busy.

So, I am very thankful to Stephen King. And in gratitude, I fully intend to start reading his work as soon as I can download a few of them to my Kindle.

And I am especially thankful to – and proud of – my prodigal daughter, Cristin. Maybe someday, if I work hard and apply myself, dad can walk in his daughter’s footsteps.

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Side Note: For those who think I might be siding with a "liberal loon" for displaying my appreciation for Stephen King's talents, I want to be clear that while his political views are almost 180-out from mine, that has nothing to do whatsoever with his mastery of the writing craft. He and I would argue until the cows come home about politics, but that has nothing at all to do with the craft of storytelling in print. We shouldn't refuse to acknowledge genius just because we don't like the person's political views.