This Writing Lark is Difficult

Well its not so much the writing, its the finding time required to give it the attention it needs in between family duties and work.

I'm finding at the moment that, between my job and catching up on all the day to day life stuff that went on hold during Christmas, my work attention span is exhausted and all I want to do when I do get an hour to myself is vegetate in front of the TV, and bloody enjoyable it is too.

Having said that I've got a couple of the course work exercises from part 2 out of the way this week, but I'm still behind target and will probably let the end date slip a couple of weeks.

I've started to read the book "on Writing" by Stephen King. Its a strange work, falling somewhere between a "how to" manual on writing and an autobiography, but its well written and entertaining as well as informative, and the pages are flying by.

I have to confess I'm not a great fan of Mr King, although I do like some horror fiction (James Herbert has long been on my favourite authors list). Reading this book however has helped me understand why I dont like his work, its too real and it shocks me.

I came to this rather startling (to me anyway) conclusion whilst reading his account of how the shower scene in his first bestseller "Carrie" came to be written. He tells how Carrie herself was based upon two girls from his high school who were bullied basically because they were different, and admits that he joined in the abuse, although in an infrequent and minor way.

The translation of this real life experience is, I believe what makes the scene so shockingly lifelike, and why, ultimately, I don't like it.

With this understanding came the realisation of just how good a writer he must be.