Quiz

lUIlI!' 10 n lull stop, and one nanosccond l.ucr ,lIl1l'\pl.lIlllI'~ 11l11II"gill:irY cops exactly why I had to do what I did, or insisting th.u I did 111,1III I.H.I do it.

1 happened to mention this to a hypnotist I saw 1II;'IlY years ago, and he I' looked at me very nicely. At first I thought he was feeling around on the floor for the silent alarm button, but then be gave me the following exercise, which I still use to this day.

Close your eyes and get quiet for a minute, until the chatter starts up. Then 14 isolate one of the voices and imagine the person speaking as a mouse. Pick it up by the tail and drop it into a mason jar. Then isolate another voice, pick it up by the tail, drop it in the jar. And so on. Drop in any high-maintenance paren- tal units, drop in any contractors, lawyers, colleagues, children, anyone who is whining in your bead. Then put the lid on, and watch all these mouse people clawing at the glass, jabbering away, trying to make you feel like shit because you won't do what they want-won't give them more money, won't be more successful, won't see them more often. Then imagine that there is a volume- control button on the bottle. Turn it all the way up for a minute, and listen to the stream of angry, neglected, guilt-mongering voices. Then turn it all the way down and watch the frantic mice lunge at the glass, trying to get to you. Leave it down, and get back to your shitty first draft.

A writer friend of mine suggests opening the jar and shooting them all in the H head. But I think he's a little angry, and I'm sure nothing like this would ever occur to you.

What Writing 1;1 STEPHEN KING

King,Stephen."WhatWritingIs."On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. NewYork:Poc~etBooks 2000.95-99. Print. '

Telepathy, of course. It's amusing when you stop to think about it f1 h - or years 1peo~ e ave argued ab?ut ~hether. or not such a thing exists, folks like .1. B. Rhine have busted their brains trying to create a valid testing pro . I . d 11 h . . cess to ISO ate It, an ate tune It's been right there, lying out in the ope lik M Poe's Purloined Letter. All the arts depend upon telepathy to some de I e b r. I b li h . . ff gree, ute I~vet at wnting 0 ers the purest distillation. Perhaps I'm prejudiced, but even If I am we may as well stick with writing, since it's what we came he t think and talk about. re 0

My name is Stephen King. I'm writing the first draft of this part at my desk 2 (the o~e under the ~ave) on a snowy morning in December of 1997. There are thmgs on my mind. Some are worries (bad eyes Christmas shop . even started, wife under the weather ' pmg not with a virus), some are good things r:- (our younger son made a surprise visit I Books are a uniquely portable home from college, I got to play Vince magic. Taylor'S "Brand New Cadillac" with The Wallflowers at a concert), but right now all that stuff is up top. I'm in another place, a basement place whe th

I f b . h I' h re ereare ots o: ng t, ig ts and clear images. This is a place I've built for myself over the y.ea~s.It s a far-seelll~ place. I know it's a little strange, a little bit of a contradiction, that a far-seeing place should also be a basement I b h ' h .. . h U p.ace, utt at s ow It ISWit me. you construct your own far-seeing place y . h. . , oumlg t put It ill a treetop or on the roof of the World Trade Center or on the edge of the Grand Canyon. That's your little red wagon, as Robert McCam . f hi I mon says 111 one o. is nove s.

This book is scheduled to be published in the late sum- mer or early fall of 2000. If that's how things work out, then you are somewhere downstream on the timeline from me ... but you're quite likely in your own far-seeing place, the one where you go to receive telepathic messages. Not that you have to be there; books are a uniquely portable magic. I usually Listento one in the car (always unabridged; I think abridged audio-books are the pits), and carry another wherever I go. You just never know when you'll want an

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STEPHE~ ..KJNG

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escape hatch: mile-long lines at tollbooth plazas, the fifteen minutes you h.avc to spend in the hall of some boring college building ,:aitil.'~ for your advisor (who's got some yank-off in there threatening to commit sUICIdebec~u~ehelshe is flunking Custom Kurrnfurling 101) to come out so you can g~t his Signature on a drop-card, airport boarding lounges, laundromats on ral~y afte~noons, and the absolute worst, which is the doctor's office when the guy IS runrung late and you have to wait half an hour in order to have something sensitive mauled. At such times I find a book vital. If I have to spend time 10 purgatory before going to one place or the other, I guess I'll be all right as long as there's a l~nd- ing library (if there is it's probably stocked with nothing but novels by Danielle Steel and Chicken Soup books, ha-ha, joke's on you, Steve).

So I read where I can but I have a favorite place and probably you do,, . . . , too--a place where the light is good and the vibe IS usually strong. For me It s the blue chair in my study. For you it might be the couch on the sunporch, the rocker in the kitchen, or maybe it's propped up in your bed-reading in bed can be heaven, assuming you can get just the right amount of light on the page and aren't prone to spilling your coffee or cognac on the sheets. .

So let's assume that you're in your favorite receiving place just as I am In \ the place where I do my best transmitting. We'll have to perform our mentalist routine not just over distance but over time as well, yet that presents no real problem; if we can still read Dickens, Shakespeare, and (with the help of a footnote or two) Herodotus, I think we can manage the gap between 1997 and 2000. And here we go-actual telepathy in action. You'll notice I have nothing up my sleeves and that my lips never move. Neither, m?s~ likely, do yours.

Look-here's a table covered with a red cloth. On It IS a cage the size of a ,. small fish aquarium. In the cage is a white rabbit with a pink nose and pink rimmed eyes. In its front paws is a carrot-stub upon which it is contentedly munching. On its back, clearly marked in blue ink, is the numeral 8.

Do we see the same thing? We'd have to get together and compare notes to make absolutely sure, but I think we do. There will be necessary var~ations, or course: some receivers will see a cloth which is turkey red, some WIll see om' that's scarlet, while others may see still other shades. (To colorblind receivers, the red tablecloth is the dark gray of cigar ashes.) Some may see scalloped edges, some may see straight ones. Decorative souls may add a little lace, and welcome-my tablecloth is your tablecloth, knock yourself out. .,.

Likewise the matter of the cage leaves quite a lot of room for individual interpretati~n. For one thing, it is described in terms of rough. co~parjs~lI. which is useful only if you and I see the world and measure the things in rt WHit similar eyes. It's easy to become careless when making rough comparisons. but the alternative is a prissy attention to detail that takes all the fun out 01 writing. What am I going to say, "on the table is a cage three feet, six inches ill length, two feet in width, and fourteen inches high"? That's not prose, th:l.l\ an instruction manual. The paragraph also doesn't tell us what sort of rnatcrinl the cage is made of-wire mesh? steel rods? glass?-hllt docs il really rnaue t We all understand the cage is a see-through I1ICdiIlIH; Iwyolld thnt, we don't care. The most interesting thing here isn't ~'VI'II 1111' 1,111111 1I11111dlll11\ rnhhi: III

STEPHEN KING I WhaL Writing Is 3071

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I.hecage, but the number on its back. Not a six, not a four, not nineteen-point- five. It's an eight. This is what we're looking at, and we all see it. I didn't tell you. You didn't ask me. I never opened my mouth and you never opened yours. We're not even in the same year together, let alone the same room ... except we are together. We're close.

We're having a meeting of the minds. I sent you a table with a red doth on it, a cage, a rabbit, and the number 10

eight in blue ink. You got them all, especially that blue eight. We've engaged in an act of telepathy. No mythy-mountain shit, real telepathy. I'm not going to belabor the point, but before we go any further you have to understand that I'm not trying to be cute; there is a point to be made.

f . lness can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hope- 11 u ness, or even despair-the sense that you can never completely put on the page what's in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes harrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page.

I'm not as~~ng you to come reverently or unquestioningly; I'm not asking 12 you to be politically correct or cast aside your sense of humor (please God you have one). This isn't a popularity contest, it's not the moral Olympics, and it's not church. But it's writing, damn it, not washing the car or putting on eyeliner. If you can take it seriously, we can do business. If you can't or won't, it's time for you to close the book and do something else.

Wash the car, maybe. 13