Day: January 31, 2002

Discussing Stephen King’s recent announcement that he’ll stop publishing five books from now, Neil Gaiman writes: “I’m proud of him. It takes a lot of guts to decide to stop doing something that you can do and that works, when you’re finished….Not writing, when you don’t feel you have anything to say, is an art that very few writers have mastered.”

And a Sharon from Texas writes asking Mr. Gaiman about secret signals, and it occurs to me, hey, I know a Sharon from Texas…

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” – Stephen King

Bestselling writer Stephen King, who once dubbed himself “the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and Fries,” is giving up publishing books altogether after his next five, two of which have already been scheduled for 2002 release. “You get to a point where you get to the edges of a room, and you can go back and go where you’ve been, and basically recycle stuff,” King told The Los Angeles Times. “I’ve seen it in my own work. People when they read ‘Buick Eight’ [to be published by Scribner this fall] are going to think ‘Christine.’ It’s about a car that’s not normal, OK? You say, ‘I’ve said the things that I have to say, that are new and fresh and interesting to people.’ Then you have a choice. You can either continue to go on, or say I left when I was still on top of my game. I left when I was still holding the ball, instead of it holding me.”

Fellow capper Erik Wilson, aka Generik, sent me a list of “Excuses for Not Coming to Work”. By far my favorite is “I just found out that I was switched at birth. Legally, I shouldn’t come to work knowing my employee records may now contain false information.” There are mornings when I would be tempted to try that.