“What Writing Is”
King is very direct in the use of metaphor to distill down to basic elements what he considers writing to be. “What Writing Is” appears in bolded capitalized font at the top of the page. The first words of text below it—completing the declarative assertion above—is the metaphor spelled out:
“Telepathy, of course.”
The rest of the section goes on to offer an explanation of this explicitly stated theory of writing.
The Tommyknockers
Although some might pick up this rare exercise in non-fiction from King hoping its true subject is the author of their favorite novels expounding “on writing” them, the book is actually very light on such behind-the-scenes stuff. It is a book on writing itself, not on writing horror novels or Stephen King novels. That said, he does specifically point out how one of his novels was written specifically as a metaphor. The Tommyknockers is a science fiction story is about aliens that invade one’s mind, offering up energy in exchange for the soul:
“It was the best metaphor for drugs and alcohol my tired, overstressed mind could come up with.”
The Toolbox
Stephen King is, rather notoriously, a kind of blue-collar writer. In the sense that he is not viewed as some sort of aesthetic sitting up in an ivory tower writing novels where nothing really happens for scholars to pore over for decades while copies remain unbought or unread. He writes stories to be read, not studied—although that has already started to change and will likely do so more significantly posthumously. As a blue-collar type writer, then, it should come as no surprise that he constructs his writing advice around the bluest of blue-collar metaphors:
“I want to suggest that to write to your best abilities, it behooves you to construct your own toolbox and then build up enough muscle so you can carry it with you. Then, instead of looking at a hard job and getting discouraged, you will perhaps seize the correct tool and get immediately to work.”
Darkness
For a book on the subject of writing, darkness as a metaphor comes awfully late in the game. Darkness as a metaphor is just about everywhere in writing since the dawn of the 20th century. By virtue of its omnipresence alone it must be considered the definitive metaphor of the modern age. And yet, it is not even King himself who engages it here, but his son in an interview about his father about his father’s writing:
“I’ve always thought that my dad’s stories sold bravery, that they essentially were making an argument that, yeah, things might get really bad. But if you have some faith and a sense of humor, and if you’re loyal to your loved ones, sometimes you can kick the darkness until it bleeds daylight.”
Bad Metaphor
Part of the advice on good writing that King doles out is arrived at through negation. That is, he offers examples of bad writing as a means of illuminating how to follow through on his positive advice on good writing. He even takes time to specifically offer an example of one his favorite badly constructed metaphors composed by an unnamed writer.
“He sat stolidly beside the corpse, waiting for the medical examiner as patiently as a man waiting for a turkey sandwich.”
