Excerpt
I actually began On Writing in November or December of 1997, and although
it usually takes me only three months to finish the first draft of a book, this
one was still only half-completed eighteen months later. That was because I'd
put it aside in February or March of 1998, not sure how to continue, or if I
should continue at all. Writing fiction was almost as much fun as it had ever
been, but every word of the nonfiction book was a kind of torture. It was the
first book I had put aside uncompleted since The Stand, and On
Writing spent a lot longer in the desk drawer.
In June of 1999, I decided to spend the summer finishing the damn writing book
— let Susan Moldow and Nan Graham at Scribner decide if it was good or bad, I
thought. I read the manuscript over, prepared for the worst, and discovered I
actually sort of liked what I had. The road to finishing it seemed clear-cut,
too. I had finished the memoir ("C.V."), which attempted to show some of
the incidents and life-situations which made me into the sort of writer I turned
out to be, and I had covered the mechanics — those that seemed most important
to me, at least. What remained to be done wa ... read full excerpt from: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft ebook
