This piece was written for, and first published in, Outsider 'zine in May 2021. Outsider is a collection of personal essays, poems and illustrations responding to Stephen King by women, non-binary folx and trans men.
Prior to this, I had written a couple of short blog pieces about getting sober (including one referencing The Bell Jar, natch), but reading + writing + Stephen King offered a perfect opportunity to reflect on life, booze and the universe.
Content warning: alcoholism, very brief mention of domestic violence
On Writing, reading and sobriety
Unless otherwise attributed, all quotes are from ‘On Writing’ by Stephen King
“If there is any one thing I love about writing more than the rest,
it’s that sudden flash of insight when you see how everything connects.”
When I saw the call out for this ‘zine, there were a couple of ideas I wanted to explore. I’ll break the sad news to you now: this is not my in-depth analysis of the best/worst cats in King stories. I decided to go with a topic that really resonated (even more than cats): On Writing and sobriety – drinking, writing, creating, recovering. I’d been reflecting on my own relationship with booze and knew I’d enjoy revisiting On Writing and all it has to say about sobriety. Which, it turns out, is covered in just 16 pages out of 351 (pages 96-112 in my copy). Huh. I had been so sure that the primary theme of On Writing was King talking about when and how he got sober, the books he didn’t remember writing, the ones he went on to write, the relationship between addiction and creativity, and the mythical nature of the booze-soaked author. In my head, that was the book, all of it. I probably wouldn’t have pitched the idea otherwise…
“The memoir is, at its core, an act of resurrection. Memoirists re-create the past, reconstruct dialogue. They summon meaning from events that have long been dormant. They braid the clays of memory and essay and fact and perception, smash them into a ball, roll them flat.”
(Carmen Maria Machado, The Dream House)
Is On Writing a memoir? Is it a writing manual, a life guide, a reconstruction of King by King? I think it’s all of these to me, maybe some or more to you. We bring our baggage with us when we sit down with a book. If it feels like the writer has not only brought theirs but unpacked it in front of us, our eyes will be drawn to the items we carry in common - hey, they have some cherry Mentos, a broken compact mirror and a fractured history with alcoholism too! In On Writing, King offers up memories and confessions alongside straight-talking advice. Reading it feels like your no-bullshit friend leaning in to say the exact words you need to hear at that moment. There’s a connection. Reading memoirs is as subjective as writing them. At that moment, I needed to read about someone whose work I loved fighting their demons, becoming booze-free and continuing to be awesome. I first read On Writing when I was heading towards sobriety, though I didn’t really know it at the time.
"If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others:
read a lot and write a lot."
I knew this. As a kid I read constantly and though I wrote less often, I knew there was magic in understanding and crafting a story. There was alcoholism in the house, and there was violence in the house, but there was also an immense amount of love and encouragement. My mum made me hot chocolate and we sat on a beanbag reading Roald Dahl books, she used her library card to double the number of Point Horrors books I could take out at once, she read every story I wrote and kept them alongside ‘real books’, and she whipped up my imagination by sewing costumes and creating worlds with me. I guess here’s as good a place as any to confess to my homemade Ewok costume (Kneesaa, FYI), and the hours spent flopping about on a piece of blue material on the floor wearing a lycra mermaid’s tale…
Anyway. From my late teens, booze started to interfere with this magic. I still loved books, devoured them, stockpiled them, and smelled them at any given opportunity (book smell!), but I found the stories evaporated not long after I finished them. I continued to write a bit too, my jobs and creative pursuits all built around words, but the ideas were untethered, my confidence eventually on the floor. Writing a little isn’t enough, and reading isn’t enough if you only skim the surface.
“The idea that creative endeavour and mind-altering substances are entwined
is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time.”
When I was around fifteen I discovered a whole new world of books - Kesey, Camus, Kerouac, Plath, Ballard. I tended towards the existential, the countercultural, or the intoxicated, and I thought this was all very cool. I fell in angst-ridden love with the passage in The Bell Jar where Esther tastes vodka for the first time and decides it’s her drink: “it went straight down into my stomach like a sword swallowers’ sword and made me feel powerful and godlike.” In her memoir, Drinking: A Love Story, Caroline Knapp writes: “I identified with legions of drinking writers... Drinking seemed like part of the turf to me...These were dark and tortured souls, artists, people who lived life on a deeper plane than the rest of us, and drinking seemed like a natural outgrowth of their lives and work, both a product of and an antidote to creative angst.” This was how I felt about the characters I adored - they were messy, brilliant, and feeling everything to painful, glorious excess. Things tumble from indulgent to problematic pretty quickly.
“There’s just enough of me left inside to know that I am globally, perhaps even
galactically, fucked up”
King writes that part of him knew, as far back as 1975 when he wrote The Shining, that he was an alcoholic, but “It began to scream for help in the only way it knew how, through my fiction and through my monsters. In late 1985 and early 1986 I wrote Misery (the title quite aptly describing my state of mind)...” He describes how he wrote The Tommyknockers in 1986 with heart racing and coke-bloodied nose plugged with cotton.
“Annie was coke, Annie was booze and I decided was tired of being Annie’s pet writer.”
In March 2018, I posted on Facebook: “Red wine and Misery, my emo autobiog title” with, yes, a picture of the book and a big glass of Malbec. I stuck a winking face on the end – books, wine, curating a good social show. I was tired. I had made some positive changes in my life to tackle trauma and Big Feelings, but booze was still there by my bed, axe in hand, ready to chop if I got too cocky. But, I had started reading Stephen King. Friends assumed I already had - I loved (most of) the adaptations and horror in general, and was so familiar with some of the characters that even I was surprised it had taken me so long. Sometimes, when you think you’re coming late to something, you are actually right on time.
For a couple of years, I read almost exclusively King. My partner had created a spreadsheet of the books by release date, marking where stories and characters crossed over and leaving little notes against each title.
I confess I read Doctor Sleep before The Shining. No hate mail, please. I had seen the film of The Shining several times (I like it, but it’s Kubrick not King), I knew the story and I knew that the violent, raging father wasn’t someone I wanted to give time to, at least not before I’d given his kid a chance. What was I saying about bringing our baggage to a book?
I still have a couple left to read, and have only found four that I didn’t enjoy. That is some hit rate, and it’s been truly beautiful getting stuck into them.
“It starts with this: put your desk in the corner and every time you sit down
there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room.
Life isn’t a support-system for art. It’s the other way around.”
On Writing is full of practical, useful and motivating advice for writers, and this time round, my brain was open to that. I got over the embarrassment of pitching an idea based on a misremembered version of the book, and got lost in King’s insistence that writing takes time, reading takes time - it’s work, but it’s good work.
I started Project Read Some King and life started to change. The romantic in me wants to leave that there - the books saved me! - but there was also therapy, getting my own place (with plants and cats), setting boundaries, finding some pockets of joy in things… and, after I gave my Annie Wilkes a good hobbling, getting sober. At one time, I couldn’t have named you a sober author - wouldn’t have wanted to, the idea antithetical to the myth or tortured genius - but now I run a sober book club and, like the Baader-Meinhoff, they are everywhere.
The first piece of furniture I bought for our new house was my desk. It’s in the corner and whilst I’m sure there are other forces at work too, I can attest that while sat in that corner I have started writing again. 500 words a day at lunchtime, every day, minimum. There’s a small group of us that meets on a Saturday morning to write together online. I get up early on a Saturday morning. To write.
“Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It’s about getting up, getting well and getting over.
Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.”
I got reading, I got sober, I got well, I got writing, I got happy.
Notes from the writer, a year-and-a-bit on: I didn't last long with the 500 words at lunchtime, but I have continued to write. I write as and when I can, when I want to. I have written scraps of micro-memoirs, essays, a draft of a novel, and still meet with the lovely Saturday morning crew. But I write in bursts and that suits me fine. I am still a big fan of remembering the books I am reading: hard recommend.
I mention a couple of books in that - The Dream House, The Bell Jar, and Drinking: A Love Story. And all the King books, of course. Have you read them? Let's nerd out about them!
Huge thanks to Steph for publishing my piece in Outsider. You can add your name to the list for the next print run of the 'zine here. And just feast your eyes on this AMAZING cover illustration by Jonas Bernasconi >>>
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