"You must not come lightly to the blank page" →

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Stephen King is the master craftsman of writing and tells us a lot about himself in his book, "Stephen King On Writing, A Memoir of the Craft.”

Early in the book, he offers some insightful advice to writers:

"You must not come lightly to the blank page.”  

The irony of this quote is that this book was completed after his severe accident. He was hit head-on while walking along the gravel shoulder of Maine State Road Route 5. It was his habit to walk along this same road in the country near his house. It was June 19, 1999, at about 4:30 PM, when a van coming towards him hit him; he flipped and flew through the air, landing 14 feet from the road.  

When this terrible accident happened, this book was about halfway through the first draft. He offers a lot of detail on the event and his recovery. You see that he did not indeed re-approach his writing lightly.

The process of writing is tedious and often requires coming back day after day to try to produce value. Sometimes the more you come back, the harder it gets, and you reach a point where you just bore down and try to choose your words without fear and make demands on yourself that you should have started with. It would have been better not to come lightly to the project initially.

Stephen King’s book, On Writing: a memoir of the craft, in addition to being a writing guide, is an autobiography, and the part of King’s life it tells includes an incident that he would have been required not to treat lightly, and as in much of the book, he showed us what he meant by the advice to writers that he presented.

Writing Quote

“You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair–the sense that you can never completely put on the page what’s in your mind and heart… but you must not come lightly to the blank page.” – Stephen King, On Writing.