On writing, part 2

I have to say, I definitely liked the last section better than this one, but I still liked this one. He was somehow able to take a totally boring subject and make it a little bit more appealing.

First off, he started off by comparing writing to telepathy. This really makes sense to me because that's practically what it is. Through writing, he is able to convey the same thoughts and ideas and get the same points across to completely different people at completely different times. He had those thoughts in 1997, the people who read it in 2000 understood the same point, and I, in 2011, am understanding the same exact things that everyone else did. Pretty cool how that works.

One part of this section he discussed vocabulary and mentioned the words insalubrious, dithyramb, cozening, and raconteur, all of which I was absolutely clueless on the meaning. BUT  I looked them up on my iPad (built in dictionary) and I now know that an "insalubrious dithyramb" is an enthusiastic piece of writing that is unfavorable to the health, and that a "cozening raconteur" is a cheating storyteller. I will probably never use these words in my entire life, but it's cool to know what they mean.

Another section that stood out to me was when he was talking about the differences between bad, competent, good, and great writers and how you can't make a good writer into a great one. I'm not really sure why he thinks this but it could be that since a good writer is already "good" they may just be satisfied with staying there and not actually progressing, whereas a competent writer is so close to being good that they just have to push themselves that extra bit in order to reach their full potential. I know sometimes it's easy to just settle for what you have at the moment rather than to try a little harder to reach what you could be so that may be what he means by that. 

When King was talking about talent and how you do something that you're talented at until you can't physically do it any longer, it made me want to go practice trombone and spinning mace. I definitely understand what he means by that. When you're talented at something and it's something you enjoy doing, you just want to improve upon that until you can't stand it anymore.(And I have practiced solos to that point..)

The final thing that I liked about this section was King's discussion on symbolism especially his reference to Jesus in his book The Green Mile. I mostly liked this because I thought it was really clever to give his character those initials, and I probably never could have thought of that.

Overall, this section was more tolerable than I thought it would be. I honestly thought it would be awful since the whole thing was only on writing, but I actually enjoyed it and I learned a few things while reading it also!