On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

King gets drunk for the first time at 19, on the senior class tripin New York. He and his friends buy Old Log Cabin whiskey, and King gets so drunk that “there’s just enough of me left inside to know that I am globally, perhaps even galactically, fucked up” (88). He gets very sick the next morning, spends the day in bed, and feels a little better the next day. After talking with the principal, he asserts that he doesn’t need to get drunk again. The next day in Washington, D.C., King repeats his actions by getting drunk.

Ten years later, King celebrates the completion of The Shining by drinking at an Irish saloon with a friend.

In August of 1973, Nellie is diagnosed with uterine cancer. She dies in February 1974. Early one morning, in February 1974, Dave and King sit with Nellie as they prepare for the end. They hold a cigarette to her lips and she smokes. She says, “My boys,” then becomes unconscious (93). They hold her hands until she eventually passes away.

Nellie is buried at the Congregational Church. King gives the eulogy: “I think I did a pretty good job, considering how drunk I was” (94).

King delves into his relationship with alcohol. He did not consider himself an alcoholic until the family starts recycling. One day, he tosses a beer can into the bin and sees just how many beers he has had over the week. He says, “Holy fuck, I’m an alcoholic […] You have to be careful” (95). King does not address the issue, but rather tries to be careful and avoid serious harm.

During his last five years of his drinking, King pours all his unfinished beers down the sink every night, and “if I didn’t, they’d talk to me as I lay in bed until I got up and had another” (96). At the time of writing this memoir, he has been sober twelve years.

By 1985, King is also taking drugs, though functioning on “a marginally competent level” (96). He begins to work out his addiction through writing books such as Misery and Tommyknockers. Tabby steps in and stages an intervention with King’s friends and family. She tells him that he can either get help or leave the house. King bargains for two weeks to think about it and ultimately chooses to get clean.

Towards the end of his drinking, King drinks a case of sixteen ounce tallboys a night. His state is so altered that he can’t remember writing the novel Cujo. Once he starts to get sober, he feels “evicted from life” (99). However, as time goes on, things get better. Throughout all of this, King never stops writing.

King reflects on his desks. He gets a “massive oak slab” in 1981 and spends most of his time behind it “drunk or wrecked out of my mind” (100). A year or two after he gets sober, he replaces the desk with a living room set, where his children like to spend time with him. Later, he gets another desk, “handmade, beautiful, and half the size of the T. rex desk” (100). It is behind that desk that he sits to write this memoir.