The Spark File Podcast Transcript
Season 5, Episode 20: Stephen King On Writing

Susan Blackwell:
Welcome to The Spark File, where we believe that everyone is creative, but smart creative people don't go it alone. 

Laura Camien:
I'm Laura Camien.

Susan Blackwell:
And I'm Susan Blackwell. And we are creativity coaches who help people clarify and accomplish their creative goals. 

Laura Camien:
Know that just by listening to this podcast, you are joining a warm and wonderful clan of creatives.

Susan Blackwell:
But, you may be asking yourself, ladies, what exactly is a spark file? 

Laura Camien:
A spark file is a place where you consistently collect all your inspirations and fascinations. Every episode we're going to reach into our personal spark files and exchange some sparks, and from time to time we're going to talk to some folks who spark us, too. 

Susan Blackwell:
And your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to take some of those sparks of inspiration and make something of your own. So, without further ado, let's open up The Spark File. Laura Camien!

Laura Camien: 
Susan Blackwell, I’m excited.

Susan Blackwell:
Ooh, because I got a goodie for you today.

Laura Camien
Okay, I can't wait. Yeah, I'm just going to sit back and relax.

Susan Blackwell: 
I brushed this the other day but we didn't get into it because we were busy working and we didn't have time, but over the holidays I was looking for a book to read, simply for pleasure.

Laura Camien: 
Oh, my gosh.

Susan Blackwell: 
Because when the spark file is galloping along, most of my reading is connected to work, either research or podcast or curriculum, reading our clients' work, but I wanted to read something completely for pleasure and when I say read, I mean listen to it on audio, because that is my joy and my jam. Oh my God, I love an audiobook.

Laura Camien: 
Yes. Yes.

Susan Blackwell: 
So I started an audio book by Stephen King called 11/22/63. It is fun, this book. It's all about a high school English teacher who, in 2011, inherits a time portal that drops him into the late 1950’s, and he goes on a quest to attempt to prevent some terrible things from happening, including the assassination of JFK. It is history, it is science fiction—

Laura Camien: 
Wait, okay, I was going to be like how have I never, ever, ever heard of this? And now I'm realizing A.) I've not read the book, but I love Stephen King. Um, but I think they made a tv show. They did, and I saw it wait, don't say anything.

Susan Blackwell: 
Wait! Don’t say anything, because I'm about  pages to the end of the book. I don't know how it ends and I don't know they only did one season of that show, I believe, and I don't know if it so did one season of that show, I believe, and I don't know if it…so much happens in that book. I'm like could they cover it all in one season of a TV show?

Laura Camien: 
Well, I don't know, because I saw the show but I have not read the book. But now I want to read the book. 

Susan Blackwell:
Oh my God.

Laura Camien:
Because you teased me with this idea that you're reading a Stephen King thing that has based in history, and I was like what? How am I? I don't even know what is it. How did I not?

Susan Blackwell: 
and then I was like that's all we have time for yeah.

Laura Camien: 
You guys. This is how brutal it is. Brutal with the teasing.

Susan Blackwell: 
But I knew we were going to talk about it on this podcast. It is a very entertaining book. I am excited to see where it ends. I have no idea how he is going to end this book, which is pretty fun when you're  pages from the ending of a book and you're like, I don't know where we're headed. That of where we're going.

Laura Camien: 
I mean, that's skill, that is Stephen King.

Susan Blackwell: 
Skill. And you know what I was reminded by this book, how much I enjoy the writing of Stephen King the creativity and the surprise that he serves up. And when reading 11/22/63, I was also reminded of another Stephen King book that I have read and reread so many times like an old friend that I return to and I cannot believe in five seasons of this podcast and the hundreds of sparks we have covered. Neither of us has done an episode on Stephen King's On Writing.

Laura Camien: 
Yes, I've almost done it, Susan. I have almost done it because I two…I have two. I was going through my books and I was going to get rid of books and I'm like, oh my god, here are two different copies of it, both earmarked, underlined, et cetera and then a third and a fourth copy that apparently I re-bought at some time and I'm like, okay, do I love this book or do I love this? How many times do I want to purchase this book? It's so good.

Susan Blackwell: 
It's a great book but—great gift. Great gift for a writer.

Laura Camien: 
Great gift for a writer, holy crap.

Susan Blackwell: 
So I thought, before we make another season of the Spark File podcast–

Laura Camien:
We better get this one in here

Susan Blackwell:
This is what I'm going to spark you with. 

Laura Camien:
Oh, this is good.

Susan Blackwell: 
People ask—I'm sure they ask you too. They ask us all the time if we can recommend books about fill in the blank, and one of the top requests is what books do we recommend about writing? And there's a student who I had at one of my early creativity workshops—I'm going to call them Joyce and I recommended to Joyce what I always recommend, which is Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird and Stephen King's On Writing. So this is like classic and as evidenced by Laura's four copies. So first I have to shout out the cover of this book. My edition has a cover that's a photo of the exterior of a house with white siding, a big window glowing with light from the inside. There's flowers next to the external double cellar door, the kind where you can access the basement from the outside of the house the kind of family might scramble into if a twister was coming. You know what I'm talking about.

Laura Camien: 
Yes, I do, all too well.

Susan Blackwell: 
There's something about that cover on a Stephen King book that I just love. So at first glance the image is luminous, but what lurks behind those cellar doors beneath the house? I just want to say kudos to whoever designed that book cover. It is so witty to me.

Laura Camien:
It's so, Stephen King–even though the book is about writing.

Susan Blackwell:
But it's also about he talks about the man in the basement. He calls the muse, “the man in the basement.” And I was like this is such a great. I love that cover, but the book has been out for decades now. It's been out for so long that there's many different cover designs for that book at this point. This is a book that both Laura and I check in with every few years. I really love this book. It is a delightful buffet and you learn about Stephen King's background and upbringing. I think he hoped that it would shine a light on those early seeds of why he became a writer, how he became a writer—

Laura Camien:
Yes.

Susan Blackwell:
Events that I think he doesn't necessarily draw the dotted line for you, but influenced the kind of writing that he likes to make as an adult.

Laura Camien:
Yeah, yeah.

Susan Blackwell:
He also shares a toolbox of really, really helpful technical tools and he shares an amazing true story about why the book almost didn't get completed. There was a…He was in the midst of writing the book and there was a major disruption that almost prevented the book from being completed. So it's it's a…It's not a long book, but it's just such a, such a buffet. And Stephen King says right at the top that it's a short book because most books about writing are filled with bullshit. So he figured, the shorter the book, the less the bullshit, which is a great indicator of one of the reasons that I think I'm drawn to Stephen King as an artist. He comes from a working class background. He reminds me of where I'm from, kind of this rundown place where kids run feral through the neighborhood, and I enjoy that those places and people are represented in his work. When you think about the group of kids in the series It or the teenagers in Carrie and many of the characters and locations that are represented in 11/22/63. They're familiar to me and I appreciate that. And I also appreciate that all the success that King has experienced came from his talent, his creativity, his joy in writing, his work-ethic and commitment to writing. It was not about privilege or being well-connected. He is a self-made artist, which always…it gives me hope for myself and it gives me hope for other people who came from those types of backgrounds.

Laura Camien: 
Amen.

Susan Blackwell: 
Yeah.

Laura Camien: 
Amen, I remember, like I remember him talking about like his process and my takeaway somehow was also, like, I understand his process and he's also saying you don't have to do it like this, but just fucking do it However it works for you is how you should do it.

Susan Blackwell: 
He's really clear about that, about, uh, you know, journalists, I mean…He's been interviewed so much and asked so many times like where do ideas come from and how do you, how do you write a story? And he talks about it in a really specific way. Like a story comes to him and it's almost like a fossil underground and it's his job to very carefully, sometimes with a shovel, but a lot of times with like a feather and a Q-tip, to extract the story fossil as completely and as undamaged as possible. And he's also like and that's how I think of it and that is my process, and it is…that doesn't mean that it has to be any other writer's process.

Laura Camien: 
Which is so refreshing because I remember it feeling like it gave me permission to just figure out what process works for me and that is the process.

Susan Blackwell: 
That's right, and he stresses that the way that he and this is so evidenced in the book that I'm reading now that I have 30 more pages left of he is following the story and is as surprised by the outcomes as we are, and I think it's one of the reasons why I have no idea how this book is going to end, because he didn't chart it out and outline it. He's discovering it in real time, as am I. And then he goes back on subsequent draft passes and considers theme, beefs things up, plants, seeds that will pay off later.

Laura Camien: 
Or moves things like this. Doesn't want to be revealed this early. I'm going to move it to chapter 13 or whatever yeah.

Susan Blackwell: 
So this book is? It's just a slim little book, but it is so chock-a-block with sparks and I just wanted to share a few of them, maybe to entice you to pick it up yourself. But this is just going to be the tip of the sparkberg, as we say.

Laura Camien: 
This makes me so happy, Susan Blackwell.

Susan Blackwell: 
So he wrote Carrie when he was teaching English at a local high school. When he was teaching English at a local high school, he was living in a rented double-wide trailer and driving a car with a transmission that he couldn't afford to fix. His wife Tabitha, who he calls Tabby, who he is so in love with, was working at Dunkin' Donuts. They had two little kids and they couldn't afford a phone. He was spending his summer months washing sheets and tablecloths at the New Franklin Laundry, a job that he had previously done full time, and he acknowledges that writing on top of his teaching job was the most challenging part for him. Many of us know this challenge of trying to, you know, make sure that the rent on the double wide trailer is paid, and carving out our creativity in the margins. But he said his wife made a crucial difference in those two years–that her support and belief in him was a constant, and I think it's…this is really worth noting. Having someone or someone(s) believe in you and your work is pretty priceless, and it can help, keep you going.

Laura Camien: 
Well, we firmly believe in that at the Spark File.

Susan Blackwell: 
We do, we practice that at the Spark File. Another thing that I love about this book he shares where some of the sparks came from for some of his most well-known stories. You may have heard us say that sparks are everywhere and Stephen King provides evidence of this. During high school, stephen had a job at the Rurumbo Mills. He bagged loose fabric, he dyed fabric and one 4th of July weekend they offered time and a half for workers who were willing to spend the weekend cleaning the mill from top to bottom. And because he was just like a lowly high school student, they picked other people first for those jobs. He wasn't even present for the cleaning, but when he returned to work this is Stephen King's writing. These are his words. “One of the die house guys told me I should have been there. It was wild. The rats down in that basement were as big as cats, he said. Some of them, goddamn if they weren't as big as dogs. Rats as big as dogs. Yow! One day late in my final semester of college finals over and at loose ends, I recalled the dye house guy's story about the rats under the mill, big as cats, goddamn, some as big as dogs, and started writing a story called Graveyard Shift.” So someone mentioned something to him about this like wet basement and the giant rats that were and he just tucked it somewhere into his mental spark file and pulled it out because as a kid he was obsessed with, like, horror comics and sci-fi, and so he just plugged it into his writing.

Laura Camien:
My God.

Susan Blackwell:
Another example–King had a part-time summer job as a janitor at Brunswick High and he got paired with a guy named Harry, a war veteran, and one day they were charged with cleaning the girls' locker room and Stephen King saw things in that girls' locker room that they didn't have in the boys' locker room including special trash cans bolted to the wall that Harry taught him were used to dispose of, like feminine hygiene products and tampons. The memory of the images that he observed in the girls' locker room came back to him one day while he was working at the laundry job. And he was working at the laundry job he's working on the machines, putting big, gross, dirty linens into the washing machines. And he began in his mind's eye to see the opening scene of Carrie, where Carrie starts her period and is met with cruelty and bullying. And he had also read an article in Life magazine some years before suggesting that at least some reported poltergeist activity might actually be telekinetic phenomena, telekinesis being the ability to move objects just by thinking about them. And he says there was some evidence to suggest that young people might have such powers, especially girls in early adolescence, right around the time of their first period. “Pow,” Stephen King writes, “Two unrelated ideas–Adolescent cruelty and telekinesis came together and I had an idea.” Now around the spark file, we'd call that—

Laura Camien:
Creation by recombination.

Susan Blackwell:
But then Stephen King fills in the details about the character of Carrie from two girls that he had known and gone to high school with. One was bullied for wearing the same clothes day after day after day after day, and the other one had a mother who had a large crucifix hanging over the couch in their living room in their trailer. King had helped them move some furniture in their house and had seen it, and I was just like the way that his mind, his mind, is a spark file and the way that it creates by recombination—and the way that he can tell us that is just it's such a fun tour of his brain and his writing process, this book.

Laura Camien:
Yes. So good.

Susan Blackwell:
So good. And something else I want to underline here and King's book reinforces this for me is my belief that nothing is for naught, nothing is for naught friends. So my version of this is you're me, you move to New York City to become an actor and in the meantime you work in a corporate office to pay the bills. And that may feel like it's not advancing you towards your creative dreams in a meaningful way, but I'm going to tell you the many years of experience I had working in those environments, with those people, commuting on the subways of New York City, wearing that drag, being in those meetings. I draw on that stuff all the time as a writer, as a performer, and no acting class prepared me more for acting on camera than working on Park Avenue. None! and Stephen King's work proves over and over again that nothing is for naught. Like all of that. Nothing is for naught like all of that, all of it, all of it.

Laura Camien: 
All of it!

Susan Blackwell:
All the high school friends, all of the weird jobs–

Laura Camien:
Tiny bits of scientific knowledge or, you know, like just combining little bits of things. So when you jot something down in your spark file, as as I often do, that's like science-related, I'm like I'm not going to be writing a science paper at any point, but this sparks me for some reason. I don't know why. I don't know why and we'll see what happens with it, but these are great examples of how you combine it with another idea and boom.

Susan Blackwell: 
Boom. Yeah. So as I was rereading On Writing, I realized that the novel  that I'm almost done with, 11/22/63– it pulls in so many experiences from King's life, the details, the scenic backdrops, the wardrobe, the dialects, the streets the cars so much of it is pulled from his lived experience and I wouldn't have realized it unless I was sort of reading them in parallel. So take it from me and Stephen King, nothing is for naught. And it all goes into the big rag bag of your imagination. And you get to draw from all of it. Because, as we say around the spark file, if you have to live through it you might as well draw from all of it. 

Laura Camien:
You know what I love? Can I just say, like, I love his ability to um make the most um crazy kind of idea grounded in reality. And I mean that by, like Christine, the a car, a haunted a car that's haunted fire starter. I absolutely loved the way it was so grounded in reality. I actually believed like there are people who could start a fire with their mind with a push. Um, and that whole interaction I've never forgotten between like the dad who's like at the end if he's got no juice left and he, and also he's at the end of his rope in his life and he has to like give a cab driver a dollar and use his mind to give him a little push to convince him it's $20. And like just the way he writes about it. As I say that I'm like that sounds absurd, but the way he writes it it's so grounded in reality and it's a reminder you get to make up all the rules.

Susan Blackwell: 
Well, he is doing this so beautifully in the novel that I'm reading now. The rules of engagement around slipping through a time portal.

Laura Camien: 
Yeah!

Susan Blackwell: 
I don't want to spoil anything for anybody who's going to read this book, but one of the rules of engagement in that particular book that I just love, and he writes it so consistently, which I think is why it also feels organic in the books that you're citing—is that the idea that time and the past is obdurate and it does not want to be changed. So if you are trying to change historical outcomes, say it's, the amount of resistance is going to be 

Laura Camien:
Be really strong.

Susan Blackwell: 
Push even harder, yeah. If you're trying to change a little thing, you might feel a little resistance. But there are certain pieces of sci-fi or world building where I'm sort of like, okay, the rules of engagement aren't super clear or they don't feel like they are married to reason. And this feels like it is married to reason.

Laura Camien: 
That's a great way of putting it. He always grounds it in reason logic, so that you're sort of like, yeah, that makes sense.

Susan Blackwell:
The organic too, Laura, that push that you're talking about, and do they even use that term in Firestarter? The push? In On Writing? Stephen King says early in the book that when he and his brother Dave would, instead of saying I have to go to the bathroom, they would say I have to push. 

Laura Camien:
Amazing, 

Susan Blackwell:
And that, to me, is funny that those things are tied together, but I also think we understand that sort of like an organic muscular exertion, yes, and we can translate it into a mental exertion.

Laura Camien: 
Yeah yeah, so fascinating. Oh my God, I love this book. Are you going to make me pick it back up again?

Susan Blackwell: 
Yeah, it's a fun read and it is, I think, surprisingly deep and useful for such a slim book. In On Writing, Stephen King also offers us a fantastic toolkit to use as we write, rewrite and edit our work, and I mean, like grammar, adverbs, really useful 101 stuff. And one thing he shares is his foundational belief that in order to be a writer, you should be reading and writing a lot. Oh, my God, yes.

Laura Camien: 
Oh my god, yes! Yes, he's so clear about that.

Susan Blackwell: 
He's really clear about it, and I know that I know from my own firsthand experience and from the report of so many clients and friends who are writers. Sometimes getting started, keeping the commitments to ourself can be hard, but if you want to be a writer, the commitments to ourself can be hard, but if you want to be a writer, you have to be writing and reading a lot, and I want to share an extended passage where he speaks about this: “My own schedule is pretty clear cut. Mornings belong to whatever is new, the current composition. Afternoons are for naps and letters, Evenings are for reading, family, Red Sox, games on TV and any revisions that just cannot wait. Basically, mornings are my prime writing time. Once I start work on a project, I don't stop and I don't slow down unless I absolutely have to. If I don't write every day, the characters begin to stale off in my mind. They begin to seem like characters instead of real people. The tale's narrative cutting edge starts to rust and I begin to lose my hold on the story's plot and pace. Worst of all, the excitement of spinning something new begins to fade. The work starts to feel like work and for most writers that is the smooch of death. Writing is, at its best, always, always, always, when it is a kind of inspired play for the writer. I can write ‘in cold blood if’ I have to, but I like it best when it's fresh and almost too hot to handle. I used to tell interviewers that I wrote every day except for Christmas, the 4th of July and my birthday. That was a lie. I told them that because if you agree to an interview, you have to say something, and it plays better if it's something at least half clever. Also, I didn't want to sound like a workaholic dweeb, just a workaholic, I guess. The truth is that when I'm writing, I write every day–workaholic dweeb or not. That includes Christmas, the 4th and my birthday. At my age, you try to ignore your goddamn birthday anyway. And when I'm not working, I'm not working at all, although during those periods of full stop, I usually feel at loose ends with myself and have trouble sleeping.”

Laura Camien:
Wow!

Susan Blackwell:
Stephen King stresses this is his process and it doesn't have to be your process, but I do agree If you want to be a writer, I'm going to say it for the third time–you’ve gotta be writing and reading, too.

Laura Camien:
Yeah, writing and reading.

Susan Blackwell:
He writes, depending on his age and process, as of this writing which was about two decades ago, he tries to write 2,000 words a day, and he sometimes gets there by 11:30am AM and sometimes he doesn't get there until deep into the afternoon. But however he gets there, he gets there. He recommends working in a serene atmosphere—doesn't have to be fancy, a dedicated nook with little distraction, preferably no TV, no phone and, I'll add, no social media.

Laura Camien:
Oh boy.

Susan Blackwell:
With a door you can close to communicate to yourself and the world that you mean business. He recommends that if you are new to writing, that you begin by setting a lower word count goal, say  1,000 words, and that you take one day a week off. He feels that if you take more than one day a week off, you'll lose the urgency and the immediacy of your story. So show up six days a week and write one word at a time until you get to 1,000 words. Real talk.

Laura Camien:
Real talk, that's real talk yeah. That’s how you’ll get it done.

Susan Blackwell:
That's how you'll get it done. That's how you'll get it done, he says. “Sometimes those words come hard to begin with. It's like exercising with stiff muscles. You have to loosen them up and then you're on fire. Sometimes the words come easily. Some mornings it's like working on an assembly line or in a warehouse, but every now and then you suddenly find yourself lifted to another plane of existence. I know how flourid that sounds, but it's true.” And I think he's right. I do too.

Laura Camien:
I do too, I do too. I feel like he's talking about those times where, like, you step away and you come back and read what you wrote and you're like, who wrote that? Where did that come from? I don't, you know. I don't recollect coming up with that line. 

Susan Blackwell:
That is the drug of writing, that's the candy, oh so good.

Laura Camien:
What a spark.

Susan Blackwell: 
I feel like this is the key to his success. Truly, he truly seems to take great joy in writing and reading. He says when I'm writing, it's all the playground, and the worst three hours I ever spent there were still pretty damned good. It is my observation of myself that I don't love writing as much as Stephen King loves writing. I don't love writing as much as Stephen King loves writing, which makes sense because he has put out so much and I've put out much less, but this is somebody who really, really has tapped into the joy of writing.

Laura Camien: 
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, and you can feel it in his, you know in his writing. But I do think that, um, it may have a good amount to do with, like those brakes that you take away from riding, what it takes to like let's get that engine going again and it feels like it's sputtering a little bit, but working your way through that and sticking with it, so that then you get you know when that engine is running…But the more brakes we take away from it, I think the harder it is to get back into that groove.

Susan Blackwell:
To me, exercise is the best analogy to writing.

Laura Camien:
Exactly it is and it is exercising just a mental and creative muscle.

Susan Blackwell:
Yeah, he says, “I have sat down to write on days when I was feeling fine. I have sat down on days when I was sick with the flu and running a fever. I sat down on days when I had a horrible hangover. I worked on this book after being struck by a minivan while I was out for an afternoon walk, with my broken legs stretched out under the desk. And do you know what? The worst day I ever had was fucking great.” This is a person who loves writing and, I think, whose life has been made and healed by writing too. 

Laura Camien:
Oh yes.

Susan Blackwell:
I mean the joy that Stephen King feels when writing is flowing, when he's capturing a great piece of storytelling. I think that he he's capturing a great piece of storytelling. I think that he genuinely wishes that for all of us who write. In January of 2024, King wrote an afterword to the anniversary edition of On Writing and it concluded with this, “Nothing lasts forever, and I fully realize that I've got a lot more road behind me than there is ahead, but over the years I have had a chance to hone what talent God or whoever gave me. Have I given my constant readers pleasure as we walk that road together? Taken them away from the everyday and plunged them into a world of make-believe? In other words, have I given them a measure of joy? If so, understand that I felt that joy first–that delight in the story. Would you like to do this job? Okay, get started. I wish you well and I wish you joy.”

We also wish all of you writers such joy, and I wanted to share one last thing. I recommend. As I said earlier, I recommended this to Joyce, my young student, who said what books should I read? And I was like Bird by Bird and Stephen King's On Writing. So a little bit of time passed, and I don't know a month, and I got an email from Joyce and Joyce said okay, I finished those two books. What should I read next? And I said you shouldn't read anything, you should write. And I want to say that to all of you too Read it, read on writing it's a wonderful book and then write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write. Hopefully with a fraction of the joy that Stephen King has felt in his writing and the joy that he has brought to all of us readers.

Laura Camien: 
Yes, yes, well done, Susan. I love this spark, I love this book. I love these messages from Stephen King. Truly the best.

Susan Blackwell: 
And again, it's not for…Stephen King is not for everybody. He reminds me so much of like, my people that I I love that somebody that comes from what he comes from has grown into such an astounding artist. I think his writing is tremendous.

Laura Camien: 
Yeah, same, and not all of it's for me. I'm not a horror person. You know that, and I know you're not either. And yet, because they're so grounded in reality, I can read a book about a car that's been possessed and be engaged and creeped out— or Pet Sematary or any of these where I'm like what am I doing reading this book? It's the writing. It's so good. The writing is so good.

Susan Blackwell: 
Yeah, thank you, Stephen King.

Laura Camien: 
Thank you, Stephen King, and thank you, Susan Blackwell.

Susan Blackwell: 
Oh, my pleasure, Laura Camien, I think that's it. This episode of the Spark File was made on the lands of the Lenape and the Mohican people and, as always, we hope it put another bunch of sparks in your file. Hey, listen, if there's a spark you'd like us to explore or if you'd like to learn more about how to coach with us to accomplish your creative goals, email getcreative@ thesparkfile. com or reach us through our website, thesparkfile. com.

Laura Camien: 
Hey, we will even happily take your feedback, but you know the price of admission. First you got to share a creative risk that you've taken recently.

Susan Blackwell: 
You can follow us on social @ thesparkfile and be sure to subscribe, rate and five-star review this podcast. It really helps other listeners to find us. Also, If you like this podcast, we hope you'll share it with people that you love. And if you didn't like it, get down…Get down real close to that opening of the sewer. Get down in there. There's somebody down there who wants to talk to you.

Laura Camien: 
If something lights you up and gets your creative sparks flying, we are writing you a forever permission slip to make that thing that's been knocking at your door. It is your turn to take that spark and fan it into a flame. 

Susan Blackwell:
You know you gotta take it…

Both:
And make it!

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