Recent Reads

Hello Future Ranters!

Recently I have read an excerpt from Stephens King article “Reading to Write”. This excerpt was about the idea that in order to write effectively, a writer before all else, must be a reader. Stephen King argued for many points, however, to best explain his stance in a single sentence quote, “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have time to write.”

A little background story can make this more clear, however. Stephen King explains that in his childhood he read a lot of stories. He engulfed stories of fiction and non-fiction alike and absorbed these stories to later assist his understanding and capabilities in literature. However, something that stood out from this article was that not only did he appreciate good writing but he acknowledged poor writing and learned from it. In fact, his attitude towards poor writing was that “He could do better” And as we have seen from his legacy, it’s hard to argue he didn’t.

Stephen King’s language throughout the article was very blunt and straight to the point. He did not try to dance around to stay vague to keep his statements infallible or avoid to disrespect. He made his points and why they were his points. While people can argue that by doing so, his statement was fallible and that he was overly disrespectful, this drew me in because not only did he make harsh statements, but he made realistic statements that any author or reader could benefit from and he made his statement for that exact same group. To me, he essentially screamed the idea that something can be good, and that things can be better in terms of quality of writing.