3-2-1 Response – Stephen King

I was able to attend Stephen King’s speech at “Fall for the Book,” on Friday evening. The whole purpose of him being there, apart from being a highly recognized author, was to receive the Mason Award, which I didn’t even know Mason gave. I have to be honest in stating I’m not a huge Stephen King fan, but this was one of the sessions available to me.

I was really intrigued by him being so humoristic during his speech. This was surprising considering his books are mostly in the genres of horror and fantasy, as far as I’m concerned. I really enjoyed though actually listening to him, because I realized that there may be little bits and pieces of him reflected in his writing, but as a person he almost seemed like a comedian. He started his speech by stating recognizing the fact he is highly famous. This made me think back to Bird by Bird, and about how writers die to get published, yet at points it seems that his being famous isn’t what really matters to him. I also really liked how he applied his past experiences, mostly in New York, to his speech. He made himself seem no different from the audience, except when he would mention certain books he wrote, and then you realize, “Oh, wow. He did write that. That’s awesome.” I think one of the most important points he made to the audience was encouraging everyone to keep reading. He literally said to just stop everything, go buy a book and read. I completely agree with this methodology, but of course making time is difficult.

I really wish I had gone maybe having read at least one of his books. I mean, of course I’ve seen Stephen King adapted films, but it’s probably not anything at all like his writing. Maybe then, I would have been able to get more of his speech, which the majority was based on what influenced him to write about certain things. It’s nice when a person has so many experiences, and can take them and write about them, just like Lamott suggests. Now it makes me wonder, how do you finally choose which experiences to write about? We have so many experiences, and Mr. King seemed to take simple little moments and turn them into books, like It and Cujo. Then he stated how he writes some books and doesn’t even remember where they came from. Then I wonder, how one can keep writing continuous pages that turn into an amazing story, based off of the simplest or most insignificant, yet entirely relevant experiences?