Perspective, Baby!
Much of the advice contained within this text is utilitarian. Right upfront, King clears the pathway of the intense sort of grammarian advice that stifles creativity, then proceeds to make lots of room for advice on how to prepare for writing. And sometimes the advice gets ironic:
“I’m in another place, a basement place where there are lots of bright lights and clear images…a far-seeing place. I know it’s a little strange, a little bit of a contradiction, that a far-seeing place should also be a basement place.”
Strange Words
One of the most ironic assertions just seems downright strange from a man who makes his living crafting fiction. But when added into the mix that he used to English, the irony gets turned up to eleven. What makes this even stranger is that the following ironic assertion from Stephen King is not intended as irony itself, even though it seems like should be:
“I was astounded at how really useful `thematic thinking’ turned out to be.”
Good Advice/Opposite Advice
A pattern of irony repeats itself throughout the book. It seems as if either King didn’t go back and read what he wrote or else is just somehow oblivious to the fact that his own advice stands in ironic contradiction to…his own advice:
“let me repeat my basic premise: if you’re a bad writer, no one can help you become a good one, or even a competent one.”
“I doubt if I’ve covered everything you need to know to become a better writer”
Doctor, Heal Thyself
In the above case, it must certainly be that the latter explanation suffices. For there are many other occasions where irony arises out of a fundamental question of King’s own sense of being oblivious to how what he is saying does not actually apply all that well to himself:
“For me, good description usually consists of a few well-chosen details that will stand for everything else.”
To illustrate why this idea of a few details all one needs let’s go to the math: The Stand, 1308 pages. It, 1138 pages. Under the Dome, 1074 pages. One cannot argue that to an extent it is the details that make a Stephen King novel what it is, but one can only call it ironic when King advises other writers to be judicious.
The Writer’s Irony
There is one particular observation made by King about a subject one would expect he knows quite a bit about that may well be the single most useful nugget of wisdom in the book. It is also one of the most ironic within the very narrow and limited readership who actually do write professionally for a living (although King actually directs his advice to all writers, published or not). The irony lies deep within the DNA of any writer who depends on production for even a mere slice of their income. These writers are especially likely to be intimately familiar with the problem and just as likely to be resistant to King’s solution because it completely contradicts a mindset which has established through experience:
“I’ve found that any day’s routine interruptions and distractions don’t much hurt a work in progress and may actually help it in some ways. And the larger the work looms in my day—the more it seems like an I hafta instead of just an I wanna—the more problematic it can become. One serious problem with writers’ workshops is that I hafta becomes the rule.”
