First tell yourself the story, then edit it for others.

I think that is part of his fearlessness. It’s an adventure when you tell the story to yourself.

I have found I don’t miss much that way. Instead of writing about the red couch, I also write about the whole room. Maybe comment on some small thing that happened in the room and why it looks the way it does. Why the couch is red… So I feel like I am in the room, not just observing the couch.

Dear Stephen King

Thank you for having enjoyed reading some of your works: I find that I have probably learned more about ordinary America and the people living there reading these than by watching hundreds of hollywood-movies. Besides I think it shines through, that you are also very sympathetic as a person.

The quality of your stories however are in my view pretty uneven. Sometimes they tend to get too long and even somewhat boring and clichee-ridden at times. Your habit with revealing some of the creative writing process, I find rather more sympathetic than actually productive bearing in mind, that fictional litterature is really all about seducing the reader into – for at time – believing, that what he or she reads has actually taken place “once upon a time”, so that the author is supposedly merely a sort of (although perhaps of the god-like all-knowing sort) reporter telling the audience the whole and full truth (so help him God).

This being said I find your apparent way of working interesting and I quite like the relaxed everyday down to earth language in your stories.

Obviously, you don’t write “off the cuff”, but not unlike a scientist or an engineer, you enjoy working in rather methodic way, calculating, experimenting etc. in the process.

As far as I can see your working method is somewhat like this:

1. You get some basic idea (maybe inspired from a recent event in your personal life)

2. You then create a sort of skeleton for your story.

3. Finally you dress up the skeleton with a lot of realistic, often meticulously described details, some of which being quite normal, some fantastic, some horrible, some “indecent”, some digusting etc. partly to give the whole “body” “atmosphere” and “aroma” so to speak, partly to make the various scenarios seem realistic for the audience.

Now, here is an idea for a story, which I think might be very worthy of your talent as a popular writer.

The idea is, that an old man, (name: Walther Schmidt, born: Munich 1920, Marital status: widower), who at the the start of World War II was a young German officer proudly participating in Nazi Germanys conquest af France 1940, in 1985 decides to move to a remote pacific island, to spend the rest of his lifetime there as an old age pensioner. Like several of your own fictional characters he has now long since much regretted his nazi past, and has in fact become an environmentalist and very much concerned about health matters. About 10 years after, he notices a strange fact: His biological clock has somehow stopped. He is – due to his new lifestyle presumably – almost just as young now, as when he moved to the island, and he does’nt seem to be getting any older at all as time goes by.

The fictional framework is, that this Walther Schmidt keeps a diary, wherein he notes everything, that happens around him, that he finds interesting and also his thoughts about them. After some years (God – ie the real author – knows how many) Walther dies, not because of an accident or some disase, he just finally simply decides, that enough is enough and swims into the sunset. Then shortly afterwards by accident a young (american) backpacker doing his sabbatical around-the-world-journey so popular today among young westeners finds his diary left protected from the rain in the old mans abandoned hut packed carefully in a parcel and with a dedication to the finder written in german, english and french, and excerpts from the diary is now being published, with a foreword written by the finder (the Stephen King alter ego?) with a special notion, that all profits from the sale of the book will go exclusively to the WWF.

Well. This was the rough idea. Maybe you would like to give it “body”? I would personally most certainly like to read it then.

Kindly yours

Søren Blaabjerg (Soeren Blaabjerg)
Rosenvænget 135 (Rosenvaenget 135)
8362 Hørning (DK 8362 Hoerning)
(Denmark)

Cynthia