I’m reading my first Stephen King book, On Writing. I’m paying perhaps more attention than usual to its prose style as I go, since I am trying to concurrently parse his advice and decide whether he is a writer from whom advice is to be solicited. So far its defining quality is that it’s straightforward: there’s none of the sidelong poetry you get from Atwood and Wolfe or the little inline games you get from Adams and Pratchett. He just writes what he writes, albeit (in blessed concordance with Orwell) free of tired figures of speech.

I determined all this last night in bed. I had intended to knock out a chapter or two, until my eyes got sleepy; when I finally closed the book, I noticed that I had read a hundred pages.

I’m starting to get it, Stephen King fans.