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fascinating insight into King's psyche, and it prepares you for the guidance he goes on to present. Advice for writers on the craft of writing cannot be separated from encouragement to persevere and to constantly work at improving your craft.

King puts together a toolkit to motivate and encourage writers. Much of this, inevitably, has to focus on words and sweat. If you write, language is your medium. If you want to write well, you have to work at it. Rejection by editors and publishers is one thing, you have to be self-critical as well, and develop a skin thick enough to deflect the blows but thin enough to be sensitive to advice and refinement.

"On Writing" is a lesson in motivation. King pulls no punches. Not everyone can be a great writer. Everyone might think they have a novel in them, but not many have a novel anyone else would want to read. Be realistic about your talent, instructs King.

Appreciate you can improve, can refine your skills and techniques, but, it'll take work, lots of hard work, and you may still never write a masterpiece. Cut your cloth according to its quality; you can still legitimately call yourself a writer if you're being published in circles less prestigious than those of Pulitzer Prize winners or best-selling novelists.

Writing always remains a process of self-belief, self-fulfilment, and self-discovery. It is, only incidentally, a commercial activity. If you can make a living from it, so much the better. But writing is as much a compulsive habit as abusing drugs or alcohol. You write because you have to, because it's who you are. Unlike drug or alcohol abuse, it's life enhancing and life affirming.

King's advice is specifically tailored to the fiction writer, and not just horror fiction. It's none the less instructive for non-fiction writers, though it clearly fails to identify the sorts of practical market research and market exploitation skills a freelance has to learn. You'll need to go elsewhere for that. But the motivational content you should soak up like a dehydrated sponge.

He does offer a wealth of practical advice. If you want to write - read a lot. Analyse what you read, understand what you like and why, understand what you don't like and why. Don't plot rigidly, develop situations and move your characters organically from one situation to the next. Avoid purple prose and over-larding your writing with redundant language. Care for your characters, even, maybe especially, the villains. Pace your story appropriately. Do your research but don't overburden the reader with it. And so on.

There are plenty of other books to offer similar advice, but none which can offer it with as much authority, or, indeed, compassion. What comes across is King's love of his craft and his respect for his fellow writers, wherever they may be on their learning curve.

"On Writing" is possibly the best book I've ever read on the subject, it's certainly one of my favourite three. I know this, because I've kept my copy, and provided my daughter with yet another - most other books I quickly browse then sell on Amazon.

For the writer, this book is a must read - whether you harbour the notion of writing that masterpiece, of simply seeing a piece in print, or whether you write a private journal and enjoy the texture, the passion, and tactile delight of putting words on paper. It's life-affirming, and so well paced, it reads like a thriller. You'll keep turning the pages, and won't be able to put the light out.

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