#210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

**David Senra** (0:00)
I want to tell you about a one time only limited event that I don't think you're going to want to miss. I am doing a live show with Patrick O'Shaughnessy from the Invest Like the Best podcast in New York City on October 19th. Patrick has interviewed over 300 of the world's best investors and founders for his podcast. I've read over 300 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs for my podcast. We'll be talking about what we learned from seven years of podcasting, sharing our favorite ideas and stories, and doing a live Q&A. There will also be special event-only swag. If you live in New York City, I think it's a no-brainer. But if not, I think it's a great excuse to fly in. I've already heard from a bunch of people that bought tickets, they're flying in from other cities. Some people are flying in from other countries. That's setting the bar really high, so I will have at least four shots of espresso, or four energy drinks before or during the show, so we can make it a night that you'll never forget. If you're interested in attending this unique live event, I will leave a link down below. I highly recommend you get your tickets today, and I hope I get to see you in New York on October 19th. What is writing?
Telepathy, of course.
My name is Stephen King. I'm writing the first draft of this part on my desk on a snowy morning in December of 1997
There are things on my mind. Some are worries. Some are good things. But right now, all that stuff is up top. I'm in another place.
This book is scheduled to be published in the late summer or early fall of 2000 If that's how things work out, then you are somewhere downstream on the timeline for me. But you're quite likely in your own far-seeing place, the one where you go to receive telepathic messages.
Not that you have to be there. Books are a uniquely portable magic. I usually listen to one in the car and carry another wherever I go.
You just never know when you'll want an escape hatch, a mile-long line at a toll booth plaza, the 15 minutes you have to spend in the hall of some boring college building waiting for your advisor, airport boarding lounges, laundry mats on a rainy afternoon, and the absolute worst, which is the doctor's office when the guy's running late and you have to wait a half hour in order to have something sensitive mauled. At such times, I find a book vital. If I have to spend time in purgatory before going to one place or another, I guess I'll be all right as long as there's a lending library.
So I read where I can, but I have a favorite place, and you probably do too. So let's assume that you're in your favorite receiving place, just as I am in the place where I do my best transmitting. We'll have to perform our mentalist routine not just over distance, but over time as well. Yet that presents no real problem. If we can still read Dickens, Shakespeare, and Herodotus, I think we can manage the gap between 1997 and 2000 And here we go. Actual telepathy in action. You'll notice I have nothing on my sleeves, and then my lips never move. Neither most likely to yours. We're not even in the same year together, let alone the same room. Except we are together. We're close.
We're having a meeting of the minds.
That is an excerpt from the book I'm going to talk to you about today, and the one I had a hard time putting down, which is Stephen King On Writing, A Memoir of the Craft.
And I wanted to start there because I thought Stephen King was making a similar point to what I think might be my favorite all-time quote about books, and that comes from Carl Sagan. Let me read it to you real quick. What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark swiggles. But at one glance at it, and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other. Citizens of distant epochs, books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.
And before I jump back into the book, I want to start with two other quotes. This comes from the back of the book, and it gives you a description of why this book is so unique. And it says, immensely helpful and illuminating to any aspiring writer. I think it applies to entrepreneurs, investors, anybody trying to do something creative or difficult, actually. This special edition of Stephen King's critically lauded million copy bestseller shares the experiences, habits, and convictions that have shaped him and his work. Part memoir, part masterclass. By one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writer's craft, comprising the basic tools of the trade every writer must have.