Someone who has sold as many books of fiction as I have must have something worthwhile to say about writing it, but the easy answer isn't always the truth. Colonel Sanders sold a hell of a lot of fried chicken but I'm not sure anyone wants to know how he made it. If I was going to be presumptuous enough to tell people how to write, I felt there had to be a better reason than my popular success. Put another way, I didn't want to write a book, even a short one like this, that would leave me feeling like either a literary gasbag or a trancendental asshole.
--Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
There's a gigantic takeaway for the rest of us from this inspiring and surprisingly humble quote. Everyone--even billion selling authors--worry that they'll write dumb things.
Do you worry about this too? Get in line with the rest of us.
Stephen King faced down this fear, and then went on to write one of the most inspiring books on writing of the past few decades.
Posts
