Stephen King Article

I was reading an article by Stephen King yesterday that was most interesting. He made a couple of points that he said contributed to his success.  One was to write every single day; 365 days per year.  In theory that sounds great.  After all, I love to write more than anything else in the world.  In my life, however, there is a substantial day job and my family to consider.  Then there is promotion for your books.  I’m sure Mr. King has people who promote for him but the rest of us authors have to do it ourselves.  That takes time.  I know these sound like excuses but it is not easy to find time to write every day.  It’s hard to sit down and work on the new book when the last book needs more publicity.  Next he said not to use big words in your writing.  He said readers should not need a dictionary in order to read your book.  I completely agree with him on this point.  There has been some science fiction I have tried to read that had so many technical words that I gave up after 2 chapters.  It was too much of a headache.  That being said, I expect a certain intellectual level from my readers.  I write Epic Fantasy and use a lot of archaic words as well as made up ones.  On occasion readers have told me they didn’t know what a word or two meant but they were isolated incidents.  Finally Mr. King talked about using single sentence paragraphs.  He said it flowed better like a regular conversation.  I think he is both right and wrong on this point.  If it is short dialogue you are writing then I think you can use the one sentence paragraphs. If, however, you are writing description, breaking up the paragraphs just confuses the reader.  It’s kind of like those people who go comma-crazy.  It’s just too hard to read.  Overall I enjoyed the article and learned a trick or two.  Writing is like anything else, it is different for everyone.  What works for Stephen King may not work for you or me; but it’s good to hear his point of view.