Creative Writing
September 1, 2014
Response to Stephen King’s “Toolbox”
“I asked him why he’d lugged Fazza’s toolbox all the way around the house, if all he’d needed
was that one screwdriver. He could have carried a screwdriver in the back of his khakis. ‘Yeah,
but Stevie,’ he said, bending to grasp the handles, ‘I didn’t know what else I might find to do
once I got out here, did I? It’s best to have your tools with you. If you don’t you’re apt to find
something you didn’t expect and get discouraged.”
I enjoyed this short passage on being a writer, but I especially liked the quote that is
above. This is true, not just in writing, but in many senses. You always have to be prepared for
anything, whatever life may throw at you, and make the most of it. In this sense, Stephen King is
saying that you should always have your full arsenal of writing tools at your fingertips. Even the
most simple tool that you learned back in middle school could be the perfect fit for the story that
you are working on. Then there are the complex ones that you just learned and want to try out as
soon as possible (those are the shiny new tools). Tools like vocabulary, symbolism, imagery,
metaphor, and simile would be examples of the tools that you commonly keep using in most or
all of your works. Stephen King makes a great all around comparison, and I will definitely keep
it in mind while writing my next piece.
September 3, 2014
Response to Stephen King’s “On Writing”
“Once I start 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 seem to stale off in my mind—they begin to seem like characters
instead of real people.”
I chose this quote because it reminds me so much of myself. Whenever I start a task,
whether a writing piece, building something, cleaning, or even something unimportant, I cannot
stop till I finish. It is a pet peeve of mine. The main problem I usually have is getting started, not
the process after I get started. There is one project that I have put on the backburner recently
though. It is a screenplay that I have been writing. My scriptwriting professor told me that it was
a promising idea, and I haven’t been applying this quote with my screenplay lately. I don’t want
the characters to become characters, so I should act fast. I enjoyed the rest of the article as well,
although I definitely don’t read nearly as much as Stephen King requires from writers.
September 8, 2014
Reading Response to John Updike’s “A&P”
“She had on a kind of dirty-pink - - beige maybe, I don't know -- bathing suit with a little nubble
all over it and, what got me, the straps were down. They were off her shoulders looped loose
around the cool tops of her arms, and I guess as a result the suit had slipped a little on her, so all
around the top of the cloth there was this shining rim. If it hadn't been there you wouldn't have
known there could have been anything whiter than those shoulders. With the straps pushed off,
