Skeleton Crew

Hey there.

So, I've begun Skeleton Crew (SC). I've only read the introduction thus far, but I figured I'd go ahead and post; the first entry in the book is The Mist, and it's over 100 pages long (it's the novella in the book). So I'm going ahead and posting what I've got now. The Introduction is only 3 or so pages long, though, so this entry will be short.

The first thing the introduction tells us is something which Wikipedia has already told us, and something I've already told you; that the works collected in this book were written over a 17 year span. One thing Wikipedia doesn't tell us, though, is that there are a few works in here which are previously unpublished (Paranoid: A Chant, For Owen, and Morning Deliveries [Milkman #1]). How exciting.

Then ensues a little dialogue King had had with a friend/acquaintance of his, included to show King's motivation for continuing to write short stories. The friend asks him why he still writes short stories when they flop compared to his novels, and King is like "Huh?" So his friend explains that, even though he got $2,000 for the story, he really only gets $769.50 (10% net to agent, 5% net to business manager, 50% of remainder to federal taxes, and 10% of what he sent to the federal government in taxes to the state government as taxes). His friend comments that this is just about as much as a plumber would make in a week (which King said was how long it took him to write it, but it was really more like 2 weeks), and thus the short stories were net busts.

This dialogue segues into King explaining that when one is a writer, one doesn't write for the money (unless one is a monkey). One writes because one has to; because it makes one feel better. So pfft, Wyatt.

This then leads, in the form of an example, to a brief description of how he came to write Word Processor of the Gods, and I'll be damned if it's not a very similar idea to my short story, Fingers. In WPotG, the protagonist discovers that by using his INSERT and DELETE keys, he can manifest and erase things, respectively, from existence. I'd just like to note, for all you legal beagles out there, I have not yet read this book of short stories and have likewise not read the story itself individually (if it was published somewhere before being in this book [which it was, in the January '39 issue of Playboy], then it would have been current before I was born). Nor am I claiming that King stole my idea; the above comment shows that that would be ludicrous. They are merely two stories which happen to have very similar ideas, and while one write was influenced by the other's style, the one story was not influenced by the other. Again, I had not read this story before writing Fingers, and I'm sure King has never read Fingers (unless he reads this blog, haha, wouldn't that be great?), so it's completely a coincidence. Oh well. I guess I'll never get this published after all.

Finally, in a further attempt to justify his writing of short stories, King makes some analogies. Novels are like long affairs or marriages, while the brevity and succinctness of short stories causes them to be like kisses from a stranger in the dark (I wonder what that would make novellas?). Short stories are good because they're interesting, nice, and brief, whereas novels are rewarding because they become a part of your life. The Introduction closes with King thanking people, and leading us into the book.

That's it for now. I'm going to go start into The Mist, and will probably add more though not while I'm still here at Starbucks.

'Til next time.