The beginning of On Writing showed me several things about Stephen King, one of them being that his life was more disturbing and upsetting than I could have ever imagined. It’s safe to say that roughly half of my annotations contain the word “disturbing”. An instance that stood out the most to me was when he wrote about his babysitter Eula-Beulah. Although the story was upsetting, I was drawn into it because I saw what he was exposed to. I saw what made him the writer he is today. That’s mainly what I took from this first chapter. I saw the elements that made Stephen King such an exceptional (and disturbing) writer.
Something that really bothered me at the beginning of the book was King’s excessive use of curse words. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not the type of person to get on someone’s case about their language. However, my very first annotation said, “The excessive use of cursing makes it seem like he’s trying to prove a point.” Although it let up after only a few pages, there were so many curse words in the beginning of the book that I felt like King was trying too hard to prove that his book isn’t like every other book about writing.
I feel that this chapter mostly shows King’s relationship with his mom. After he copies his first cartoon, it seems like everything after that is done to please his mom and to see her smile. I also found his story Happy Stamps quite sweet because it too showed just how much he loved his mom.
I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I think the whole purpose of the first chapter was to get you acquainted with King’s past, so we can understand why he writes and thinks the way he does.
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