Books · Creativity
Book summary and verdict
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
King says read a lot, write every day, then cut the sentence you love most, which is awful because you bought this hoping talent was a medical condition and procrastination was treatment. It isn't. You're hiding from a paragraph.
Should you read it?
Yes, especially if you spend more time planning your future author interview than writing the book they would interview you about. It gives you a daily target, a revision plan, and the rude discovery that nobody interviews a blank document.
L.Write the first draft for yourself. Revise it for a stranger. Your mother already said it was wonderful. She is compromised.
The ideas
I · Work
Read every day and write every day, because most of what people call inspiration is just work after it has showered and put on a clean shirt.
Pick a time, close the door, and write until you hit the goal, because writing is a job where the boss knows every excuse. The lazy bastard is also you.
It is very simple advice, which is irritating because simple advice leaves you with nobody to blame. Everybody wants a secret. Secrets are exciting. “Do the work regularly” sounds like something your father says while he is holding a rake.
A plumber does not arrive at your flooded bathroom and say, “I’m sorry, the pipes aren’t speaking to me today.” A surgeon does not open you up, stare thoughtfully into the distance, and whisper, “I’m waiting for the muse.” But writers do this constantly.
L.I am waiting to feel inspired. No, you are waiting to feel talented. Start disappointed.
II · Privacy
The first draft can be awful in private. Your family has suffered enough.
The rest of this idea is in the app.
III · Revision
By the second draft, the reader should wonder what happens next, not whether Gary is a horse.
The rest of this idea is in the app.
IV · Tools
Use plain words and verbs that move. If a sentence needs six adjectives, the noun is not being described. It is being buried alive.
The rest of this idea is in the app.
V · Discovery
Start with trouble, add people, and watch them make it worse. If they solve it calmly, you have written a safety video.
The rest of this idea is in the app.
What to actually do
Choose a daily target that fits your real evening, even if it is fifty words. Write until you reach it.
Smaller: Do not edit while drafting. Let the bad sentences remain bad until tomorrow.
L.Your brain will suddenly demand better coffee, perfect lighting, and a complete investigation of your keyboard. Your brain has written nothing and appointed itself head of purchasing.
Choose one real person as your Ideal Reader. Take a finished page and revise it for their face. Cut what would bore them. Clarify what would make them ask, “Wait, who the fuck is Alan?”
Smaller: One real person gives you information. “The audience” includes a man furious that the haunted basement was dark.
L.Everybody else can misunderstand it together.
Cut ten percent from something small tonight. Remove repeated explanations, slow openings, and sentences that exist mainly to admire themselves.
Smaller: If somebody asks whether Tuesday works, answer before describing your workload, your priorities, and the emotional history of the week.
L.Tuesday works. Release the hostages.
Put a book in your bag for the next gap that usually becomes phone scrolling. Read a few pages while waiting for coffee, transit, or the appliance repair person who keeps saying, “Interesting.”
Smaller: No reading challenge. No tracking system. Just make the book easier to reach than the feed.
L.A routine should help you read. It should not become middle management for a paragraph.
Still in the app
- What happened when people tried them
- Bullshit?
- Where readers disagree
- The one thing worth remembering
The rest of this book is in the app.
Skip the Book reads the self-help books so you don't have to: what each one argues, what happened when real people tried it, which claims are exaggerated, and what to do tonight. 108 books and counting, new ones most days.
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