How well do you write after you haven't written for awhile?

[DennisFeeney]

I read On Writing a while ago and you mentioned that after you returned from the hospital your wife set up a table with all the necessary tools for you to commence writing again. I want to know if what you first wrote was good or if you had to go through a lot of throwaway stuff first. Also, you included a sample from the first draft of the haunted hotel story "1408" and then your edited version. It seemed you were very close to the finished product on the first draft and I wanted to know if this is how you write in general. I write screenplays and I've finally accepted that I need to get through a first draft without dwelling too much on the details in order to begin editing it for a second draft. But my changes are, without fail, much more drastic than the changes you made. Invariably, I hate my first draft but I use it as a concrete thing to work with later, even if I completely change it. Is this just my style of writing or as time goes on will I come closer to the finished product on the first draft than I do now? And lastly, what happens when you don't like your writing, and I mean you are completely dissatisfied with your output. Do you continue and edit it later, or do you stop and start on something else?

I greatly appreciate your writing and I'm sure it will be a personal and lonely trip to find if I can only work to become a good writer, or if I was born to be a great one. But I'm having a lot of trouble right now and could use a little insight from someone like yourself.

Dennis

[Moderator]

Sorry, Steve doesn't personally respond to posts but I'll try to answer your questions as best I can. Steve's been writing for most of his life so he's honed his natural skills to the point where it doesn't take as much editing to get it right but it's never "perfect" on the first draft. There are times when he has completely abandoned projects when they're not going right. Some he has picked up later (even decades later) to finish and some are still where they were when he left them.

[Bryan James]

As a lawyer, I'm a professional writer (and some may successfully argue that I am a professional fiction writer), but I don't speak for King.

I wrote a lot when I was a kid. I read a lot when I was a kid. I almost always had a good book hidden behind my math textbook, so that's why I did Law instead of Med. That was the Genesis, and I may suck. You might suck. Every writer sucks now and then.

If it's in you, it's in you. When I was 17, I did a Summer camp with an assload of Brand-Name fiction writers. I wasn't into it, but I got some nice reviews by some heavy hitters. Did not start fiction again until 8 months ago?

I can't vouch for my quality, but I certainly have become more concise over the years. There's also a larger experiential pool to draw from for fiction, thanks to those slings and arrows of years.

Keep writing, if only because you enjoy it. That should be enough.

BJS