Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully - in Ten Minutes || Stephen King

"... So here it is, with all the bark stripped off. It'll take ten minutes to read, and you can apply it right away ... if you listen ..."







I. The First Introduction

THAT'S RIGHT. I know it sounds like an ad for some sleazy writers' school, but I really am going to tell you everything you need to pursue a successful and financially rewarding career writing fiction, and I really am going to do it in ten minutes, which is exactly how long it took me to learn. It will actually take you twenty minutes or so to read this essay, however, because I have to tell you a story, and then I have to write a second introduction. But these, I argue, should not count in the ten minutes.

II. The Story, or, How Stephen King Learned to Write

When I was a sophomore in high school, I did a sophomoric thing which got me in a pot of fairly hot water, as sophomoric didoes often do. I wrote and published a small satiric newspaper called The Village Vomit. In this little paper I lampooned a number of teachers at Lisbon (Maine) High School, where I was under instruction. These were not very gentle lampoons; they ranged from the scatological to the downright cruel.

Eventually, a copy of this little newspaper found its way into the hands of a faculty member, and since I had been unwise enough to put my name on it (a fault, some critics argue, of which I have still not been entirely cured), I was brought into the office. The sophisticated satirist had by that time reverted to what he really was: a fourteen-year-old kid who was shaking in his boots and wondering if he was going to get a suspension ... what we called "a three-day vacation" in those dim days of 1964.

I wasn't suspended. I was forced to make a number of apologies - they were warranted, but they still tasted like dog-dirt in my mouth - and spent a week in detention hall. And the guidance counselor arranged what he no doubt thought of as a more constructive channel for my talents. This was a job - contingent upon the editor's approval - writing sports for the Lisbon Enterprise, a twelve-page weekly of the sort with which any small-town resident will be familiar. This editor was the man who taught me everything I know about writing in ten minutes. His name was John Gould - not the famed New England humorist or the novelist who wrote The Greenleaf Fires, but a relative of both, I believe.

He told me he needed a sports writer and we could "try each other out" if I wanted.
I told him I knew more about advanced algebra than I did sports.
Gould nodded and said, "You'll learn."

I said I would at least try to learn. Gould gave me a huge roll of yellow paper and promised me a wage of 1/2¢ per word. The first two pieces I wrote had to do with a high school basketball game in which a member of my school team broke the Lisbon High scoring record. One of these pieces was straight reportage. The second was a feature article.

I brought them to Gould the day after the game, so he'd have them for the paper, which came out Fridays. He read the straight piece, made two minor corrections, and spiked it. Then he started in on the feature piece with a large black pen and taught me all I ever needed to know about my craft. I wish I still had the piece - it deserves to be framed, editorial corrections and all - but I can remember pretty well how it looked when he had finished with it. Here's an example:

(note: this is before the edit marks indicated on King's original copy)

Last night, in the well-loved gymnasium of Lisbon High School, partisans and Jay Hills fans alike were stunned by an athletic performance unequaled in school history: Bob Ransom, known as "Bullet" Bob for both his size and accuracy, scored thirty-seven points. He did it with grace and speed ... and he did it with an odd courtesy as well, committing only two personal fouls in his knight-like quest for a record which has eluded Lisbon thinclads since 1953....

(after edit marks)

Last night, in the Lisbon High School gymnasium, partisans and Jay Hills fans alike were stunned by an athletic performance unequaled in school history: Bob Ransom scored thirty-seven points. He did it with grace and speed ... and he did it with an odd courtesy as well, committing only two personal fouls in his quest for a record which has eluded Lisbon's basketball team since 1953....

When Gould finished marking up my copy in the manner I have indicated above, he looked up and must have seen something on my face. I think he must have thought it was horror, but it was not: it was revelation.

"I only took out the bad parts, you know," he said. "Most of it's pretty good."
"I know," I said, meaning both things: yes, most of it was good, and yes, he had only taken out the bad parts. "I won't do it again."

"If that's true," he said, "you'll never have to work again. You can do this for a living." Then he threw back his head and laughed.
And he was right; I am doing this for a living, and as long as I can keep on, I don't expect ever to have to work again.

III. The Second Introduction

All of what follows has been said before. If you are interested enough in writing to be a purchaser of this magazine, you will have either heard or read all (or almost all) of it before. Thousands of writing courses are taught across the United States each year; seminars are convened; guest lecturers talk, then answer questions, then drink as many gin and tonics as their expense-fees will allow, and it all boils down to what follows.

I am going to tell you these things again because often people will only listen - really listen - to someone who makes a lot of money doing the thing he's talking about. This is sad but true. And I told you the story above not to make myself sound like a character out of a Horatio Alger novel but to make a point: I saw, I listened, and I learned. Until that day in John Gould's little office, I had been writing first drafts of stories which might run 2,500 words. The second drafts were apt to run 3,300 words. Following that day, my 2,500-word first drafts became 2,200-word second drafts. And two years after that, I sold the first one.

So here it is, with all the bark stripped off. It'll take ten minutes to read, and you can apply it right away ... if you listen.

IV. Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully

1. Be talented

This, of course, is the killer. What is talent? I can hear someone shouting, and here we are, ready to get into a discussion right up there with "what is the meaning of life?" for weighty pronouncements and total uselessness. For the purposes of the beginning writer, talent may as well be defined as eventual success - publication and money. If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.

Now some of you are really hollering. Some of you are calling me one crass money-fixated creep. And some of you are calling me bad names. Are you calling Harold Robbins talented? someone in one of the Great English Departments of America is screeching. V.C. Andrews? Theodore Dreiser? Or what about you, you dyslexic moron?

Nonsense. Worse than nonsense, off the subject. We're not talking about good or bad here. I'm interested in telling you how to get your stuff published, not in critical judgments of who's good or bad. As a rule the critical judgments come after the check's been spent, anyway. I have my own opinions, but most times I keep them to myself. People who are published steadily and are paid for what they are writing may be either saints or trollops, but they are clearly reaching a great many someones who want what they have. Ergo, they are communicating. Ergo, they are talented. The biggest part of writing successfully is being talented, and in the context of marketing, the only bad writer is one who doesn't get paid. If you're not talented, you won't succeed. And if you're not succeeding, you should know when to quit.
When is that? I don't know. It's different for each writer. Not after six rejection slips, certainly, nor after sixty. But after six hundred? Maybe. After six thousand? My friend, after six thousand pinks, it's time you tried painting or computer programming.

Further, almost every aspiring writer knows when he is getting warmer - you start getting little jotted notes on your rejection slips, or personal letters . . . maybe a commiserating phone call. It's lonely out there in the cold, but there are encouraging voices ... unless there is nothing in your words which warrants encouragement. I think you owe it to yourself to skip as much of the self-illusion as possible. If your eyes are open, you'll know which way to go ... or when to turn back.

2. Be neat

Type. Double-space. Use a nice heavy white paper, never that erasable onion-skin stuff. If you've marked up your manuscript a lot, do another draft.

3. Be self-critical

If you haven't marked up your manuscript a lot, you did a lazy job. Only God gets things right the first time. Don't be a slob.

4. Remove every extraneous word

You want to get up on a soapbox and preach? Fine. Get one and try your local park. You want to write for money? Get to the point. And if you remove all the excess garbage and discover you can't find the point, tear up what you wrote and start all over again . . . or try something new.

5. Never look at a reference book while doing a first draft

You want to write a story? Fine. Put away your dictionary, your encyclopedias, your World Almanac, and your thesaurus. Better yet, throw your thesaurus into the wastebasket. The only things creepier than a thesaurus are those little paperbacks college students too lazy to read the assigned novels buy around exam time. Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule. You think you might have misspelled a word? O.K., so here is your choice: either look it up in the dictionary, thereby making sure you have it right - and breaking your train of thought and the writer's trance in the bargain - or just spell it phonetically and correct it later. Why not? Did you think it was going to go somewhere? And if you need to know the largest city in Brazil and you find you don't have it in your head, why not write in Miami, or Cleveland? You can check it ... but later. When you sit down to write, write. Don't do anything else except go to the bathroom, and only do that if it absolutely cannot be put off.

6. Know the markets

Only a dimwit would send a story about giant vampire bats surrounding a high school to McCall's. Only a dimwit would send a tender story about a mother and daughter making up their differences on Christmas Eve to Playboy ... but people do it all the time. I'm not exaggerating; I have seen such stories in the slush piles of the actual magazines. If you write a good story, why send it out in an ignorant fashion? Would you send your kid out in a snowstorm dressed in Bermuda shorts and a tank top? If you like science fiction, read the magazines. If you want to write confession stories, read the magazines. And so on. It isn't just a matter of knowing what's right for the present story; you can begin to catch on, after awhile, to overall rhythms, editorial likes and dislikes, a magazine's entire slant. Sometimes your reading can influence the next story, and create a sale.

7. Write to entertain

Does this mean you can't write "serious fiction"? It does not. Somewhere along the line pernicious critics have invested the American reading and writing public with the idea that entertaining fiction and serious ideas do not overlap. This would have surprised Charles Dickens, not to mention Jane Austen, John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, Bernard Malamud, and hundreds of others. But your serious ideas must always serve your story, not the other way around. I repeat: if you want to preach, get a soapbox.

8. Ask yourself frequently, "Am I having fun?"

The answer needn't always be yes. But if it's always no, it's time for a new project or a new career.

9. How to evaluate criticism

Show your piece to a number of people - ten, let us say. Listen carefully to what they tell you. Smile and nod a lot. Then review what was said very carefully. If your critics are all telling you the same thing about some facet of your story - a plot twist that doesn't work, a character who rings false, stilted narrative, or half a dozen other possibles - change that facet. It doesn't matter if you really liked that twist of that character; if a lot of people are telling you something is wrong with you piece, it is. If seven or eight of them are hitting on that same thing, I'd still suggest changing it. But if everyone - or even most everyone - is criticizing something different, you can safely disregard what all of them say.

10. Observe all rules for proper submission
Return postage, self-addressed envelope, all of that.

11. An agent? Forget it. For now

Agents get 10% of monies earned by their clients. 10% of nothing is nothing. Agents also have to pay the rent. Beginning writers do not contribute to that or any other necessity of life. Flog your stories around yourself. If you've done a novel, send around query letters to publishers, one by one, and follow up with sample chapters and/or the manuscript complete. And remember Stephen King's First Rule of Writers and Agents, learned by bitter personal experience: You don't need one until you're making enough for someone to steal ... and if you're making that much, you'll be able to take your pick of good agents.

12. If it's bad, kill it

When it comes to people, mercy killing is against the law. When it comes to fiction, it is the law.

That's everything you need to know. And if you listened, you can write everything and anything you want. Now I believe I will wish you a pleasant day and sign off.
My ten minutes are up.
(The above article is copyright Stephen King, 1988)

TO A POET A THOUSAND YEARS HENCE
by: James Elroy Flecker


I Who am dead a thousand years,
And wrote this sweet archaic song,
Send you my words for messengers
The way I shall not pass along.

I care not if you bridge the seas,
Or ride secure the cruel sky,
Or build consummate palaces
Of metal or of masonry.

But have you wine and music still,
And statues and a bright-eyed love,
And foolish thoughts of good and ill,
And prayers to them who sit above?

How shall we conquer? Like a wind
That falls at eve our fancies blow,
And old Mæonides the blind
Said it three thousand years ago.

O friend unseen, unborn, unknown,
Student of our sweet English tongue,
Read out my words at night, alone:
I was a poet, I was young.

Since I can never see your face,
And never shake you by the hand,
I send my soul through time and space
To greet you. You will understand.


'To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence' is reprinted from An Anthology of Modern Verse. Ed. A. Methuen. London: Methuen & Co., 1921.

Vonnegut's Eight Rules of Writing Fiction

Vonnegut's Eight Rules of Writing Fiction, from Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons 1999), p. 9-10:


1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages. -- Kurt Vonnegut

A Letter to Brian

I’m not black, I’m white.

Those words jar me. I don’t think in terms of color when the issue of humanity comes up, only when the issue of race does. This vision is thrust upon me, like an unwanted, smelly relative.

Race issues do only one thing for me; remind me that I’m white. Otherwise I walk through life not even thinking about the color of my skin, or anyone else’s for that matter. I suppose it’s easy for me, being Caucasian. But I also never thought of black folks as anything other than people. The Race issue, it’s like a bomb; no one notices it until it gets armed, or goes off. As a kid growing up in Toronto, I never thought much about these things. I loved everyone, black, white or green.

But the culture forced it on me.

One of my best friends growing up was a kid named Brian. He was the only black boy in a neighborhood full of Canadians and Italians, and he got his share of razzing. They used to call him “nigger-jigger” and all sorts of other nasty things. I may have said it a couple of times too, but when I saw the look on Brian’s face when I said it, I regretted the act immediately. He wasn’t a gangster, he wasn’t a punk, or a thief, or a drug dealer, or a trouble maker. He was just sweet old Brian, who always came calling on me to play, and inviting me to his house to eat mayonnaise and toast. He was a human being, and I hurt him. It hurts me now to write this.

To his mother’s credit, Brian never lashed out, never called us “white trash” or “honkies” or anything else. He never said a word. She taught him to face things with dignity, and to not lower himself in response to such cruel taunting. To be fair, as a kid I had no idea what that “N” word meant. I mean it; I was that innocent. I only knew that the kids thought it was funny, it was something to chant, something to bug Brian about. At the time we were fairly isolated from a lot of things, because there was no internet, no cell phones, no 24-hour news cycles, no swearing on television. No anything. We learned from the streets. And there was a lot of ignorance.

Kids used to treat Brian roughly, like he was some kind of second class citizen. I used to stick up for him, protect him. Sometimes I wasn’t around to do that though. The Italian kids would never share candy with him. They’d beat him up, leave him out of games, and taunt him. This was in the early 80’s. Only a few years removed from Martin Luther King’s assassination. Oh, how far we didn’t come.

One day, Brian and I were walking down the street. It was a beautiful summer day, the sky was azure blue, and the air was thick and hot. I had a bag of candy and was sharing it with him (Jelly Beans, Gummi Worms, sugar, etc…) when, down the street, a large German Sheppard had spotted us, and we started running towards Collins house (This made the dog chase us, of course) This kid Collin had the only house on the street with a large wooden fence around the front yard, and we got there panting and yelling for him to let us in. He did, but when I ran through the gate Collin suddenly slammed the door shut, locking it, and leaving Brian out there. There was screaming and yelling, and I fought Collin to open that gate, because I could hear Brian out there screaming that the dog was attacking him, biting his leg. By the time I forced Collin aside and opened the door, the dog’s owner had captured his beast and re-leashed him, but Brian was lying on the sidewalk, bleeding and crying. I looked at Collin, amazed, and almost as if I had asked the question out loud instead of in my head, he answered me.

“My father doesn’t allow blacks in the yard.” He said.

To be fair, he was young, and he was taking his cues from his father, who grew up in a much more racist culture, but it still doesn’t excuse it. Black or white, Brian was a human being, a human being, not a color, not a thing. He needed rabies shots after that. Can you imagine?

But Brian, sweet and soft spoken Brian, always came back out to play. He even forgave Collin, quietly. I’m sure he rankled with anger and emotion, but he never showed it.

He earned my eternal respect that day.

That was a long time ago, and a lot has happened since then, but I still think about Brian, and how I once called him that nasty word, and how he got locked out of a yard and bitten by a dog because his skin happened to be a different color. I think about him all the time when the race thing comes up, and that’s what it is, a thing. I will lend no credence to racism because it shouldn’t exist. I suppose this is my apology to him, for everything he went through and for his dignity in the face of it all. I always felt I should have done more to protect him, but I was only 11 years old. There was only so much I could do. Those kinds of things were just beyond me then.

But I know one thing now; Racism is the product of ignorance, and ignorance is the product of its culture, and I believe racism and ignorance are learned behaviors. But what can be learned can be un-learned, can’t it?



Brian, if you ever read this, I am so sorry.





(This post is in response to "Fun is Not Fun When You Spell It: Exploring Race Issues with Our Youth" by g.g. spirit ~ http://ggspiritwrites.blogspot.com/ )

The Beachcomber || David Hunter

Beachcomber; One who scavenges along beaches or in wharf areas, a seaside vacationer.

I stand on the beach strewn with rocks and shells and crazy collages of human refuse; old bottles, faded shoes, sunglasses, a pair of worn Levi’s; a real sandy junk yard. Everything looks old, but it’s just the sun having beaten down on them for so long. I feel old too, but it’s just the quiet that does it to me; I am still relatively young, it’s just my mind that ages here.

Georgian Bay, on the southern shore of Lake Huron, is flat limestone plain and cedar marshes. The Anishinaabeg First Nations peoples to the North and Huron-Petun (Wyandot) to the south own this land, in spirit anyway. I feel I own it too, in some primordial way. When I walk this beach, one of the longest stretches of beach in North America by the way, 8.7 miles of it, I become lost in time. I walk with the ancients, and their ghosts. I could discover the meaning of life here, given enough time.

The meaning of life; I feel ill-equipped to tackle the often heavy subject, but the surf and sand and distant seagulls point my soul in that direction anyway. I’ve often left my friends there on the beach to wander down the road, so to speak, usually late in the day when the sun is low across the water and the skies are turning dusky blue and rusty pink. This beach has another perk; you can walk out almost a quarter mile into the water and stare north to the horizon where there is nothing but sky and water, infinity, and aloneness. It’s like staring into a beautiful abyss.

Walking; further down the beach there are crags and rocks, where most of the best stuff is found. I find beautiful pieces of ornate sea-wood, which I keep for whittling by the fire. There are stones and rocks older then Moses here, and storm glass; Mother Nature takes old broken wine and beer bottle shards and buffs and sands them for years in the tides. When they return from this process they are smooth and round and lovely; I collect them by the handful. Sometimes I find old bones, seagulls, and fish. That’s okay, this is their place, and they are entitled to die here. I can find no more peaceful memorial ground then this. But the sky is growing long, and purple clouds are sailing across the darkening blue and I don’t want to leave this. I turn to look down the beach and see that my friends are packing things up, getting ready to leave, so I guess I must go. I scan the ground for another souvenir, a stone to take with me as a memento. I see a lovely buffed pink one and I pick it up, but suddenly I feel guilty. I should leave it, because it belongs here, and I have no right to take it. I put it back, and head for the crowd. They are far off in the distance, growing misty in the dusk, so I have plenty of time for thought.

I think about Jesse.

Did I ever tell you about Jesse? He’s a Dutch dwarf bunny, 8 years old now, pretty good for a rabbit. We got him Christmas Eve at a pet store for my girlfriend Clair in 2001. She took to him immediately, whenever she stopped crying for joy of course. Jesse is a spirited little cuss, and he makes a funny honking noise when he’s riled up. I was surprised at how cat-like he was; he’d sit on your lap and let you pet him for hours, he’d use a litter-box. He’d grunt his displeasure at you too. His fur is a winter white color, and he has sparkling blue eyes; the better to stare into our souls with. He’s been a great pet and a great companion for the past eight years.

We just found out he may have cancer.

Thinking of this as I walk the beach, I wonder about the meaning of things, and why people exist, and then die. Certainly not a new question and I’m certainly not the first to wonder about it, but at times when I’m faced with unpleasant things, I begin to wonder. I wonder about all the people who have ever lived and died and who have looked upon the same sun, sky and moon, who have walked the same Earth, sand, and beach, and I wonder what it all means.

This essay will not answer these questions.

So, when we finish our trip, leave Georgian Bay and head back into reality, we have to make a decision about Jesse. It’s one I don’t wish to make.

Leave no business unfinished, leave no stone unturned, and leave no person unloved. The meaning of life could be that simple.

I’ve reached my friends, and the closer I get, the further my existential thoughts are drifting away. They are young; I am young too, perhaps too young to be wrestling with these questions.

But it’s the beach, and the beachcomber in me. I search for answers in life as I do on the beach. It’s just my questing nature I guess.

The meaning of life will have to wait for another day.

The Twitter Blues

Like most people, I tried Twitter on for size. Its austere nature was odd to me; no photos, no applications, nothing; Just one big message board. But I found it very immediate, lively, and addictive. The dangerous part; crashing, coming down.

At its best, Twitter provides instant conversation to whomever wishes to engage in it; you get to meet people, you partake in entertaining and educational talk, you communicate, you listen. At its worst you’re bombarded with idiosyncratic messages (called Tweets) that are indecipherable, and people post enough quotes a day to choke a camel. People on Twitter love posting quotes; they are ready-made for the Twitter- imposed 140 character limit. All in all, it’s been an experience. But there are bad side effects, one’s that I never expected.

People are people, no matter what form they choose to communicate in, and when you get them together you get the same social dichotomies that exist in real-life situations, offices, schools, clubs; we’re all human, and we all behave the same in social settings, whether it’s online via Twitter, or in the real world. For instance, cliques exist on Twitter, and so do opinions, and tempers, and loneliness, and jealousies, and about a thousand other human behavioral traits. There are smart people and dumb people, there are literary genii, and there are grammar school drop-outs who leave linguists swooning at their phonetic butchery. It’s a smorgasbord of humanity, and they all have an opinion. If you are not prepared to wade into this maelstrom, be forewarned.

Again, people are people, they will follow you, un-follow you, fight with you, love you, hate you, stick with you, abandon you, and everything else you can think of. But you must not take it seriously. You must not.

Perhaps a personal note is in order here. I feel affected sometimes by all the things listed above. I forget sometimes that people don’t always have to pay attention to me. People don’t always have to respond to me, or “re-tweet me”, they don’t always have to be there for me, because they have their own lives, and being online all the time and being responsive to only one person is not a priority. It’s just the way it is. When I’m a little tired, and my usual online cohorts aren’t being as responsive as usual, I start getting down. Not for long though. I know they lurk somewhere in the weeds, listening. And the good ones will always be listening.

I’ll admit though, Twitter isn’t for everyone. I’m a writer, and the forum seems to work for me because I talk to other writers and other interesting and creative people. There are many lost souls though, who use Twitter aimlessly; Bad idea; If I was only using Twitter to communicate randomly about random things to random people, I think I would drive myself nuts. To everything there is a purpose, and Twitter is no exception.

I mentioned Twitter being addictive; it is. Everyone likes to get messages. Everyone likes attention. And so you get to where you crave it. As a writer, Twitter creates a lot of inspiration, but uses up a lot of time and ideas. Sometimes I just can’t muster up even 140 characters; the well runs a little dry. I’ve read where people say they need a “Twitter break.” I can feel their pain, I really can. It’s easy to jump in the fray sometimes, when you’re feeling good, and there are hundreds of conversations going on, but sometimes it can be daunting because there are millions using the service, and you get to feeling like a small fish in a very big pond. This is not a good feeling. It’s easy to get lost on Twitter, where messages flash by at light speed and you can barely catch them. Tweets can disappear into a vast void instantly. But damn it all, it’s so hard sometimes not to take it personal. Is it all just a popularity contest? Am I winning? Am I losing? Am I anything?

You may or may not relate with anything I mentioned above, but a lot of people do. Creative people are often sensitive souls. We’re forever searching for that writing nirvana; a place where you can be accepted, and things will be perfect, and people will be perfect, and all your ideas will be perfect, but let’s face it, there is no enigma greater then a human being, so don’t expect any of this perfectness. If you wish to take part in the Twitter experience, you partake in the human experience; you’ll fight, you’ll cry, you’ll laugh, you’ll love and you’ll hate. And if you need to take a “Twitter break” by all means do it. I did, and now here I am, venting my feelings. And it feels great.


And now, I can go back to Twitter, knowing that it’s not personal, it’s just life.


David Hunter, The Writers Den

Goodnight, Uncle Walter

“…And that’s the way it is.”

Walter Cronkite said those very words every evening for 19 years behind the anchor desk at CBS news. He was there when John F. Kennedy was sworn in as the 35th president of the United States, and when the same president was coldly assassinated 3 years later on November 22nd, 1963. He was there to guide America, and hold its hand, during the turbulent and confusing decade of the 60’s, when the whole world was being turned upside down and inside out due to racial tensions, the anti-war movement, and the hippie movement youth-quake. He was there at America’s proudest moment, when the Apollo 11 spacecraft blasted off into the troposphere and landed man on the moon. He sat at the center of all this, calm, cool and collected, effectively creating the model of the modern day anchorman. And now he’s gone, too soon even at age 92.

I was too young to have really appreciated Walter Cronkite, but I have heard through the years that he was known as “the most trusted man in news,” and after seeing various clips of him and listening to that soothing voice, his calm demeanor, and his heartfelt delivery, I can see why. If I had to hear bad news, I would have liked Walter Cronkite to break it to me.

Walt was a pioneer; he started broadcasting when TV was at its infancy, and worked without a net most of the time. This was in the age before tele-prompters, remember; he gave his most famous broadcast, the Kennedy assassination, off the cuff, standing by a United Press International Wire machine, reading the news as he received it. And he shared his anguish, visibly choking back tears as he told us that the beloved president was dead. His honesty, his humanity, is what made him the towering figure that he was. They don’t make them like Walter Cronkite anymore.

I was just a kid when Walter Cronkite gave his last newscast, on Friday, March 6th, 1981. I remember watching it with my parents. Hell, I bet all of America and the world were watching. And somehow I felt sad about it, his weathered and kindly face, his calm voice; he was hypnotic. And the reason I felt sad was because I was picking up on Walter’s emotions; he was sad to go too. He was being forced to retire. Still, I watched him give his last statement as CBS anchorman:


“This is my last broadcast as the anchorman of The CBS Evening News; for me, it's a moment for which I long have planned, but which, nevertheless, comes with some sadness. For almost two decades, after all, we've been meeting like this in the evenings, and I'll miss that. But those who have made anything of this departure, I'm afraid have made too much. This is but a transition, a passing of the baton. A great broadcaster and gentleman, Doug Edwards, preceded me in this job, and another, Dan Rather, will follow, and anyway, the person who sits here is but the most conspicuous member of a superb team of journalists; writers, reporters, editors, producers, and none of that will change. Furthermore, I'm not even going away! I'll be back from time to time with special news reports and documentaries, and, beginning in June, every week, with our science program, Universe. Old anchormen, you see, don't fade away; they just keep coming back for more. And that's the way it is: Friday, March 6, 1981. I'll be away on assignment, and Dan Rather will be sitting in here for the next few years. Good night.”


Goodnight Uncle Walter; I guarantee you’ll make anchor in Heaven.


David Hunter, The Writers Den

A Short History Of David Hunter

I’ve always wanted to write, ever since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. The other kids in the neighborhood thought I was crazy, because I would spend summer afternoons under the shade of the giant Maple tree across the street with a pen and paper, doodling, scribbling, writing and creating fantastic worlds.

I guess you could say I was born to write. It took a long time to find that out though; sometimes the passion was obscured by life’s little detours and dramas. And, let’s face it, we’re not all great writers right off the bat. There’s a lot to learn. Also, sometimes we take an end-run at what we really want in life; we do things the hard way.

I always wanted to be a cartoonist. I read them constantly (but what kid doesn’t?) and I wanted to make my own. When the parents found out, they gushed; “our protege!”, however, sometimes parents can lead you to believe anything, and I wasn’t the greatest cartoonist. I think I was being praised for simply trying; and that’s deceptive. Now, I would never blame a parent for that, I would have done the same thing, but it adds an interesting layer to the tapestry. It let me find out things for myself.

Then there was music; I picked up a guitar one day when I was 16 and found I could just play. Just like that, I was off joining bands and playing bars; detours. I had a journal at the time, so writing was present in my life, but nothing could beat the feeling and acceptance I got from playing that guitar on stage; a thousand watts of power, sound, people out there past the lights in the dark yelling, hooping and hollering for me. Writing, naturally, took a back seat. It was a few years before my dreams of becoming an artist were dashed as well.

My college art professor, David Blustien, animator extraordinaire, ran his classes like a boot camp. He was tough; he had seen the carnage out in the field. He pulled me aside after the course was finished. He told me he hated my drawing.

He hated my drawing, but he loved my writing.

This was a man who had drawn comics for Marvel, Mad magazine and many others. He was an animator for Disney. When he told me, after 8 months of classes, that my drawing was weak, I was devastated. But he loved my writing. He loved my writing.

So, comics were out. My last band had devolved into egotistical pettiness (as it will, in a band) and I quit. I had nothing left. Except to write.

But it hasn’t come easy; if it was easy, everyone would do it.

So Writing and I, all we have is each other now. There’s nothing else. Nothing to dilute or distract or weaken this passion I have. I still play guitar, and I can still draw comics, but I always come back to her, the written word. Some can express a dusky sunset with a song, some can paint a visual masterpiece of a misty mountain range on canvas with oil paints, but I can only describe it in word pictures; can only bring people there through the power of the page. That’s my gift.

If I had only discovered that before.

The King is dead.

No, not Elvis; he shuffled off this mortal coil long ago. I mean the king of pop, Michael Jackson.

Michael had been omnipresent for the past 4 decades, in a very tough business, and endured the insidious scrutiny that came with the age of the internet. He was a triple threat; singer, songwriter, dancer. He broke color barriers, became the first African American to gain heavy rotation on MTV. He was a humanitarian. He was the butt of tasteless jokes. He was a lot of things. And now he’s gone.

But this overwhelming sadness is not just about his death; I’m jarred by the sudden realization that everything ends eventually, and this previous feeling of permanence is fading. Whether Michael was on the charts at his peak or living through his last, and toughest, years, he was still there. You had the feeling that he was always just around the corner, waiting to come back into our lives.

As though he would always be there for us, when ever we were ready to listen again.

I’m guilty of the jokes too, I confess, but I never wished death on him; I always respected the talent and the heart of the man, he was a true artist. And, I admit, I abandoned him for other artists as I got older. I still remember, as a kid, staying up till midnight to watch the first broadcast of Thriller that long ago Halloween.

That was one of the best nights of my childhood.

None of us like to be reminded that we are mortal. It’s inconvenient. And none of us feel too comfortable knowing that someone as young, so full of life, so there, as Michael was, could ever die. It throws a monkey wrench into our little insulated worlds; a kind of forced perspective, to misappropriate a theater term. I’m being forced to think about death, and life.

Michael is gone, and I feel emptier today. Like the old adage, “you don’t know what you got till it’s gone”, I’m feeling like I should have appreciated Michael a little more when he was alive, listened to his music more when he was alive, and thought about him more when he was alive. In my mind though, he had grown old and anachronistic, a relic of the past; not so. He was as relevant as ever, musically and artistically, but the headlines turned us against him anyway. He gave us a whole life of entertainment. He gave us his nervous system, gave up his privacy and his dignity, and watched it get trampled on. And then we stopped listening.

We turned our backs on him.

But he still loved his fans, and that says more about the man then anything I can ever say.

The King is dead, gone too soon.

Outpost: Thousands of Blogs, Thousands of Voices

I was initially dubious about posting an online journal (not BLOG, ugh) due to the fact that there are thousand upon thousands of them; and how do you make one unique, anyway? Well, I feel that I'm creative enough to think outside the box (another odious phrase that should be defenestrated..) but then, only you readers can truly judge that, I'm biased, by default.

So welcome, and I hope you enjoy my ramblings. I'll be posting newsflashes, bits of info on writing, experimental stories, and general life experiences. I hope to keep you all entertained as best I can. I also want to welcome all my Twitter friends who have inspired me to pursue my dream of writing even more, and who will no doubt be visiting me here (hope) and encouraging me further.

Well, I'm off for now. Going out into the sunshine with a pen and paper (or laptop) to get something done. Happy writing everyone, and remember, Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart. Peace.

The First Outpost

This is my first foray into "blogging" (to use an odious phrase) My name is David Hunter and I will be your guide through my wacky mind and spirit.