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First Published: July 11, 2025 Paul W. Romero
Preface: This was originally written on October 17, 2022 for an assignment for my MFA program.
What if I told you there was a simple fix to all your problems? Well, writing wise.
What if I told you it was simpler than you may think? Easier said than done.
What if?
This is a question I learned to start asking myself ever since I became a Stephen King fan starting with the first King book I ever read in high school, IT.
“People say ‘well do you have bad dreams,’ and the answer is no, I give them all to somebody else” (Cavett 5:45-5:50). It all started with a manuscript Stephen King threw away while writing in the laundry room of his trailer home. He thought it was terrible, but his wife fetched it from the trash bin and insisted he finish it. That discarded manuscript went on to earn King a $400,000 book deal.
King went on to publish over seventy books throughout his career including classics that have made several top horror lists such as Carrie, ‘Salem’s Lot, The Shining, Pet Sematary, The Dark Tower Series, and IT.
King states in his memoir, “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut” (King, 145).
“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” – Stephen King
King’s ability to overcome his shortcomings has inspired me as a writer to push the boundaries of the unknown and to always ask the question, “what if?” I think this sums up King’s style most of all. King states in his memoir, “What if vampires invaded a small New England village? (Salem’s Lot) What if a policeman in a remote Nevada town went berserk and started killing everyone in sight? (Desperation) What if a cleaning woman suspected of a murder she got away with (her husband) fell under suspicion for a murder she did not commit (her employer) (Dolores Claiborne)” (King, 169).
As a writer, always be willing to ask, “What if?”
In his novel, IT, King writes, “The terror which would not end for another twenty-eight years-if it ever did end-began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain” (King, 3). I find this quote synonymous of his writing style, for it shows that his stories span long periods of time, taking us into the darker recesses of his characters’ lives; terrors that don’t just span a night or even a few days, but sometimes generations.
King’s novels dare to stand the test of time to one day be held among the other great literary authors of history such as Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, H.P Lovecraft, H.G. Wells, and Ray Bradbury (one of King’s inspirations). Out of the seventy novels he has published, I believe his timeless classics to reach this level of literary greatness include IT, The Shining, and Pet Sematary. Shelley gave us a horrid creature reanimated, Stoker gave us a frightening terror of the night, and King gave us a haunting clown that dwelled in our sinks beneath the calm surface of our reality.
More information can be found on his website stephenking.com.
Just write.
Will it be good a first? Will it be perfect? Will it make all your dreams come true? Who knows, but unless you start how will you know how it ends?
What if it’s not good? What if it’s a waste of time? What if I’m not meant to be a writer?
What if you shut that inner critic up and get it done? What if you can say you finally did something you’ve always wanted to do despite all the opposing forces? What if it really did lead to a life you never expected? What if you just took that first step?
What if?
Works Cited
Cavett, Dick. “The Dick Cavett Show Horror Masters Stephen King, Romero, Straub, Levin 1980.” YouTube, uploaded by VCRRepair76, 06 Nov. 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk4bKL328Lg.
King. Stephen. IT. New York, Signet, 1980.
King. Stephen. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. New York, Scribner, 2000.
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Paul W Romero 