Stephen King's memoir on writing nicely depicts some parts of his life while also giving out hints on how to improve one's writing skill. Writting is a craft like any other and to improve you have to read a lot and to write a lot. While it is impossible to become a great writer without talent, you can become a good writer with practice.
Apart from insights into Stephen's intersting life, the most I got out of this book are:
- Second draft = first draft - 10%. When you are correcting what you have written always try to be more concise.
- Conciseness leads to clarity and leaves things to the imagination of the reader.
- Respect grammer.
- Try to not use the passive form: it sounds too soft and just complicates things
- Skip adverbs as much as you can.
- You can write about any topic in the world but the best is to write about the things you know.