Stephen King Analysis

1. I strongly agree with Mr. King that the desire to write always being with a love of reading. In Stephen King’s memoir, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, he reiterates how important reading is to a writer. One cannot exist without the other—their unbreakable relationship is what makes lots of reading so vital to become a great writer. The pure act of reading teaches lessons impossible to learn without actually doing it. “Every book you pick up has its own lesson”, but this lesson cannot be taught unless the book is actually read (King 145). If one has a desire to read, and loves feeling like they are in a world of their own, the next logical wish is to want others to feel how they feel. Writers are born out of avid readers, which is a nice

Not only does the thirst to write start with a love to read, reading helps to make writers better. This is another one of King’s strong beliefs that he touches on in his memoir. According to King, “you cannot succeed unless you read a lot and write a lot” (King 173). Stephen King practices what he preaches, too, as he reads about seventy to eighty books per year. He believes so much in his philosophy that he devotes countless hours studying the occupation he’s in. It would be mentally impossible to spend that much time and effort doing something if there wasn’t a love for it before everything else. In short, I agree with Stephen King’s beliefs on where a writer’s desire to write comes from: reading.

2. I disagree with King’s claim that “while it is impossible to make a competent writer out of a bad writer, and while it is equally impossible to make a great writer

When I write, I generally do not “open the door” for readers until I am done with a certain paragraph or section of my writing. I do this mostly because I like to keep my writing flowing, and I do not like stopping in the middle of an idea especially when someone is there to give me more to add on. I would rather have someone critique me when I’m finished, so I know that I can always just ignore what they are saying and go on with my writing if I need to because it is already done. However, when I do finally “open the door” to a section of my writing, the first people I usually ask are friends that I made in whatever class I am writing something for. But, these people are sometimes not that helpful because I suspect they do not want to be mean or critical, so then I ask my teacher if they can read over my work for me. In English last year, Mr. Biggs was a huge help with being a good critique, and it was really beneficial because he had more experience as a writer than one of my classmates. I really trusted him in reading my writing because I knew he would help me if my thesis was really weak, and he wouldn’t just leave me at telling me that it was. He would suggest different ways I could make it better, which ultimately would make my essay or piece of writing a lot better. Personally, I would rather hear all the things that are wrong with my writing than all the things that are amazing about it. Hearing that something is good doesn’t really help me as much because chances