Everyone who reads my posts here on Bearly Books wil know that I am a fan of Stephen King.  I have many of his books, not all but many, and I have read most of them multiple times.

I do have an ulterior motive in this.  I know that you can learn how to write well by reading good writing.  I am not claiming that Stephen King is a literary gem, far from it in fact, what he is is a master story teller and that is a craft you can learn.

So how did Stephen learn the art of crafting a story worth telling and how did he find a publisher who agreed with him?

I have a book called “Bare Bones” which is the transcript of conversations with Stephen King.  Unfortunately my copy, bought second-hand, starts at page 33 so I have no idea who he is actually talking with and I have missed out on quite a bit of useful preliminary stuff but the rest of it is still excellent.

He was asked how many stories he wrote before he thought he had one good enough to publish and how did he find a publisher.

He replied that he started submitting when he was 12 years old but the stories were not good.  He says that you have to start somewhere.  He managed to get a pretty poor story published when he was 18 and was paid $35 but had picked up around 60 rejection slips before then.

Stephen consideres that he was lucky because others have collected 400 to 500 rejection slips before they get published.  He also had written 4 or 5 novels before he wrote a saleable one.

So take aways for you and I?  Keep writing and submitting.  Practice the craft of writing, submit them here for peer review, we are gentle, honest.  I want you to be published, famous and wealthy, and then brag about how Bearly Books helped you.

The other thing I have learned here which fits with what I have decided is this.  Stephen King quotes James Clavell with saying that the novel ends when you don’t know what comes next.  That’s why he finished Firestarter with a little girl walking into a magazine editorial office and saying “I want to tell you a story.”  SInce Stephen had no idea what happens next he wrote The End.

I had decided recently that my online novel, Flame, which has stalled a bit after I wrote part of the last chapter because I couldn’t figure out how to complete the last chapter actually doesn’t need to go any further.  So I have come to the same point and am now happily vindicated in that decision.

Now of course I have to go back and write more chapters.

Where are you up to with your novel or short story?  Not all ideas acan be developed into novels and not all novels should be novels.  Some of them should be short stories instead.