Review: Stephen King's On Writing

My creative writing class starts next week. It's just one of the many English classes I need to take to obtain my BA in English. The required book for this class is a book written by Stephen King, titled On Writing. While the book covers fiction writing, I have found the book itself very intriguing. (maybe I will start a novel of my own.)

The book begins by Stephen sharing various bits of his life dating back to his childhood. Within each mini-story, you find a tidbit about how that moment helped develop his skills and made him the succesful writier he is today. While the stories are interesting, you will not find a step-by-step guide to writing a novel. (Of course, I don't thik even the best of writers could give a step-by-step account that will tell the average Joe how to write a book.)

Even writers who are interested in the more technical aspects of writing will enjoy this book. There are many basic aspects to the art of writing and Stephen King does his best to explain them in terms that even a bad writer would understand. Needless to say, while the topic of fiction writing won't help most of us who endeavor to succeed in writing non-fiction articles, the book is extremely well-written, will easily hold the aspiring wirters interest and may very well teach you something that you didn't know.

P.S. While I am not a huge Stephen King fan, (in fact, I was disappointed when I picked up the book at the college bookstore) I couldn't put this book down.