On Writing- Blog 1

All in all I’m thoroughly entertained with the first “chapter”. My only complaint is, what I feel to be, the unnecessary profanity.  However, I have made great use of my black pen by scribbling out the words that I do not like. Many of King’s recollections of childhood, especially recalling the name of an illness that isn’t quite correct, I find relatable. While he had “stripe throat” in the first grade, I often fell victim of “headdick aches”.

My favorite part of the book thus far is when he is writing about Tabby’s poem. “She smiled at me. I smiled back. Sometimes these things are not accidents. I’m almost sure of it.” I found myself smiling after reading these sentences. Being a 16-going-on-17 girl, I am a HOPELESS romantic and through the crude and rough-around-the-edge descriptions of a girl with a mill worker vocabulary, I can tell he was truly in love with this woman! Obviously he loves her very much (because he says so when the opportunity presents itself), but sometimes love isn’t always genuine; anyone can write that he or she is in love with someone else, but genuine, true love can’t always jump of the pages like the words do when King is describing his wife.

Although the poem and what followed were my favorite part of the book thus far, the part that has made me truly think the most is the part where he is describing Sondra and Dodie. I found myself thinking of people that are at our high school. I found myself wondering if, well, a matter of how many, girls would have a similar fate of Dodie, or how many would die alone like Sondra. After I finished the section about Dodie, I thought about a story my youth minister likes to tell: There’s this girl who just has a hard life and everyone gives her a rough time and one day she decides to kill herself. When she’s leaving for what she thinks will be her last day of school, the quarter back of the football team held the door open for her, wished her a good day, and smiled. The girl went home and wrote him and note and gave him the bullet she was planning on killing herself with; the quarterback saved her life! I wonder if Steven King wonders if Dodie could have been save, or if Sondra could have had just one friend other than Cheddar Cheese? I wonder if he even cares. For some reason I think the fact that he does care is the main motivation of why he included such details of these two girls.

I’m looking forward to the rest of the book!