Stephen King alludes that his style is a thing of telepathy, and mostly he's right. Despite time and distance, he makes you feel like he is sitting across the table. It's a style I aspire toward, and sometimes I get it right with a reviewer saying that very thing about my work. So cool.

When King isn't writing fiction, it feels even more personal because it is. On Writing is one part memoir and one part writing instruction, which isn't an easy thing for an author like King, given that he doesn't plot or outline or throw down hard rules (except adverbs, sort of). He more or less likes to say: this is what I read, and this is how I write. If you do half of that and half of whatever works for you, you might be all right.

This makes him accessible for amateurs, prodding them along to get to work at the end of every little section. (And in truth, that is what most aspiring authors need.) For the rest of us, reading On Writing is a little weird because you find yourself saying me too or you don't during different parts of the book. And that's okay because his memoir work is solid, too, except when it gets a little windy at the end. I can almost feel at what point he set this book aside and when he picked it up again.

Mostly, he says Strunk and White a lot. It's essential advice. But the rest is smart too. When you boil it down, he tells you to be the writer you need to be, never mind the other guys and gals. Specifically, don't fake your story or vocabulary or sentence structure because you want to make money or sound smart or whatever. Just tell the story you can tell and tell it in a way that makes it your work. Sure, there are more gems than that you can pick up. My favorite one is that every character thinks it's their story, even if it isn't. That's a remarkable way to think about things. I even wrote it down in my notebook.

King was my favorite writer for a spell, a long one even. And then I discovered other writers who were better at this or that. But there is no question that he can write. If you're thinking about writing too, I don't know how On Writing will help you, but I think you will find a way to help you. It might not help you in the same way A Swim in a Pond in the Rain might help you, but it will certainly help you somehow — which is lightyears ahead of most books about writing.

And, if you've ever enjoyed King, it's a decent memoir, too, especially those stories about his start and the accident that almost cost him his life. Of course, there are a few areas he just shows off as well. The interview with his son that the publishers added is very much like that. It's a clever bit of navel gazing. But hey, who cares? I could be so lucky to do the same thing with my son someday.