An Initial Response to Stephen King's "On Writing."

 TOPIC: "ON WRITING” -- After reading the first 50 pages of Stephen King's "On Writing”:

        King's book is rich in description and vivid stories about his childhood, and the reader is adroitly informed of the upbringing which lead him to be the writer he is. While stories of a personal printing press and malicious babysitters illuminate the audience to the darkness and horrors of King's experiences and inspirations, it is not any horror story that is most memorable to me. Instead, King's adventures with his brother seem to me to be the fuel behind his entrepreneurism and willingness to put himself into the world. Perhaps no anecdote is as telling as his magnet experiment with his brother, encapsulated by the following:

"Dave cut the cord off an old lamp someone had put out on the curb with the trash, stripped the coating all the way down to the plug, then wrapped his magnetized spike in spirals of bare wire. Then, sitting on the floor in the kitchen of our West Broad Street apartment, he offered me the Super Duper Electromagnet and bade me to do my part and plug it in.

I hesitated - give me at least that much credit - but in the end, Dave's mechanical enthusiasm was too much to withstand. I plugged it in. There was no noticeable magnetism, but the gadget did blow out every light and electrical appliance in our apartment, every light and electrical appliance in the building, and every light and electrical appliance in the building next door (where my dream-girl lived in the ground-floor apartment)."

There are things that are more relatable to much of the population than siblings, and growing up with my brother as my best friend, which remains to this day, I found this story to be similar to much of my childhood. Me and my brother walked all around town and sold beef jerky sticks while growing up in Salem, and we explored much of the city and wildlife.

The book brings light to much of King's life and provides and adequate background for his authorship in horror; with so many bizarre experiences, be they painful, socially traumatizing, or emotionally draining, reveal to the reader that which King draws upon to formulate the themes and emotional progressions of his novels and short stories. 

Perhaps the most valuable or applicable element of King's writing is that his entrepreneurism was pursued no matter the obstacle and that he always tried a different avenue to being successful when something did not go his way. He figured that his writing would eventually be good enough, and that his work would eventually be published. I think what I can draw from his work to submit broadly, and have fun with what I'm writing, or I won't want to write it. I think that King must have fun with his writing.