Interview (Written): Stephen King

Stephen King rarely does interviews, but when he does grant them, they are always worth reading. Here is the latest with Rolling Stone magazine.

The vast majority of your books deal with either horror or the supernatural. What drew you toward those subjects?
It’s built in. That’s all. The first movie I ever saw was a horror movie. It was Bambi. When that little deer gets caught in a forest fire, I was terrified, but I was also exhilarated. I can’t explain it. My wife and kids drink coffee. But I don’t. I like tea. My wife and kids won’t touch a pizza with anchovies on it. But I like anchovies. The stuff I was drawn to was built in as part of my equipment.

Did you ever feel shame about that?
No. I thought it was great fun to scare people. I also knew it was socially acceptable because there were a lot of horror movies out there. And I cut my teeth on horror comics like The Crypt of Terror.

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I want to talk about writing now. Walk me through your typical day when you’re working on a book.
I wake up. I eat breakfast. I walk about three and a half miles. I come back, I go out to my little office, where I’ve got a manuscript, and the last page that I was happy with is on top. I read that, and it’s like getting on a taxiway. I’m able to go through and revise it and put myself — click — back into that world, whatever it is. I don’t spend the day writing. I’ll maybe write fresh copy for two hours, and then I’ll go back and revise some of it and print what I like and then turn it off.

Do you do that every day?
Every day, even weekends. I used to write more and I used to write faster — it’s just aging. It slows you down a little bit.

Is writing an addiction for you?
Yeah. Sure. I love it. And it’s one of the few things where I do it less now and get as much out of it. Usually with dope and booze, you do it more and get less out of it as time goes by. It’s still really good, but it’s addictive, obsessive-compulsive behavior. So I’ll write every day for maybe six months and get a draft of something — and then I make myself stop completely for 10 days or 12 days in order to let everything settle. But during that time off, I drive my wife crazy. She says, “Get out of my way, get out of the house, go do something — paint a birdhouse, anything!”

So I watch TV, I play my guitar and put in time, and then when I go to bed at night, I have all these crazy dreams, usually not very pleasant ones because whatever machinery that you have that goes into writing stories, it doesn’t want to stop. So if it’s not going on the page, it has to go somewhere, and I have these mind dreams. They’re always dreams that focus on some kind of shame or insecurity.

For the rest of the interview, go here.