Beginning your- successful- Writing Life, Thanks to Stephen King

I've decided to cut down drastically on my therapy practice and devote myself (almost) whole-heartedly to what I enjoy most in the world, namely writing. To this end I am preparing myself by digesting the second half of Stephen King's excellent book `On Writing' and what better way of doing this than summarising/ annotating it in my blog!

I draw immense strength from King's encouraging words: `it is possible, with lots of hard work, dedication, and timely help, to make a good writer out of a merely competent one'. I've never been afraid of hard work and I've had sufficient confirmation from agents and teachers that I am- at least- a competent one.

The two main things you need to do to progress from one state to the other, according to King, is to read a lot and write a lot. He calls himself a `slow reader', but still manages to get through seventy or eighty books a year. I know I've grown lazy in the past few years- too exhausted by troubled and troublesome kids and my busy practice- and want nothing more at the end of the day than to suck on `the glass teat', but this is going to change. The one thing I haven't done is to stop buying books, so I reckon I have at least a year or two's worth of reading gathering dust in teetering piles.

King suggests teaching yourself to read `in small sips' as well as in `long swallows' and this I already do, taking a book on the tube or bus or train, to waiting rooms and the toilet, although I draw the line at his suggested use of `long and boring checkout lines' to absorb a few pages. I do, however, remember reading in numerous parks and playgrounds and soft play areas, when my kids were little. He also suggests reading on the treadmill, which I've never tried, rather than listening to music or watching TV.

He says you can learn a lot of what not to do by reading bad books, citing Valley of The Dolls, Flowers in the Attic and The Bridges of Madison County as examples. Interestingly, all three have been made into films, the last a very successful one, so I would argue that the stories themselves must be good ones.

He says that being `swept away' by a book is the result of a combination of `a great story and great writing'. He believes that you cannot hope to `sweep someone away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.' Very much the same principle applies to therapy- you cannot hope to take a client to a depth of understanding of their own psyche until you have plumbed those depths in yourself with your own therapist. Which is why I had six years of therapy and have acquired a degree of self knowledge. Which helps me not to kid myself about my chances of success.

Part Two tomorrow.

Charlotte Bronte at her desk