by Stephen King
January 19th, 1990
Finished The Waste Lands tonight, after a marathon 5-hour session. People are going to hate the way it ends, w/ no conclusion to the riddle contest, and I thought the story would go on longer myself, but I can’t help it. I heard a voice speak up clearly in my head (as always it sounds like Roland’s) saying, “You’re done for now—close thy book, wordslinger.”
Cliffhanger ending aside, the story seems fine to me, but, as always, not much like the other ones I write. The manuscript is a brick, over 800 pages long, and I created said brick in just a little over three months.
Un-fucking-real.
Once again, hardly any strike-overs or re-takes. There are a few continuity glitches, but considering the length of the book, I can hardly believe how few. Nor can I believe how, when I needed some sort of inspiration, the right book seemed to fly into my hand time after time. Like The Quin-cunx, by Charles Palliser, with all the wonderful, growly 17th-century slang: “Aye, so ye do” and “So ye will” and “my cully.” That argot sounded perfect coming out of Gasher’s mouth (to me, at least). And how cool it was to have Jake come back into the story the way he did!
Only thing that worries me is what’s going to happen to Susannah Dean (who used to be Detta/Odetta). She’s pregnant, and I’m afraid of who or what the father might be. Some demon? I don’t think so, exactly. Maybe I won’t have to deal w/ that until a couple of books further down the line. In any case, my experience is that, in a long book, whenever a woman gets pregnant and nobody knows who the father is, that story is headed down the tubes. Dunno why, but as a plot-thickener, pregnancy just naturally seems to suck!
Oh well, maybe it doesn’t matter. For the time being I’m tired of Roland and his ka-tet. I think it may be awhile before I get back to them again, although the fans are going to howl their heads off about that cliffhanger ending on the train out of Lud. Mark my words.
I’m glad I wrote it, tho, and to me the ending seems just right. In many ways Waste Lands feels like the high point of my “make-believe life.”
Even better than The Stand, maybe.
November 27th, 1991
Remember me saying that I’d get bitched at about the ending of Waste Lands? Look at this!
Letter follows from John T. Spier, of Lawrence, Kansas:
November 16, 91
Dear Mr. King,
Or should I just cut to the chase and say “Dear Asshole”?
I can’t believe I paid such big bucks for a Donald Grant Edition of your GUNSLINGER book The Waste Lands and this is what I got. It had the right title anyway, for it was “a true WASTE.”
I mean the story was all right don’t get me wrong, great in fact, but how could you “tack on” an ending like that? It wasn’t an ending at all but just a case of you getting tired and saying “Oh well, what the fuck, I don’t need to strain my brain to write an ending, those slobs who buy my books will swallow anything.”
I was going to send it back but will keep it because I at least liked the pictures (especially Oy). But the story was a cheat.
Can you spell CHEAT Mr. King? M-O-O-N, that spells CHEAT.
Sincerely yours in criticism,
John T. Spier
Lawrence, Kansas
March 23, 1992
In a way, this one makes me feel even worse.
Letter follows from Mrs. Coretta Vele, of Stowe, Vermont:
March 6th, 1992
Dear Stephen King,
I don’t know if this letter will actually reach you but one can always hope. I have read most of your books and have loved them all. I am a 76-yrs-young “gramma” from your “sister state” of Vermont, and I especially like your Dark Tower stories. Well, to the point. Last month I went to see a team of Oncologists at Mass General, and they tell me that the brain tumor I have looks to be malignant after all (at 1st they said “Don’t worry Coretta its benine”). Now I know you have to do what you have to do, Mr. King, and “follow your muse,” but what they’re saying is that I will be fortunate to see the 4th of July this year. I guess I’ve read my last “Dark Tower yarn.” So what I’m wondering is, Can you tell me how the Dark Tower story comes out, at least if Roland and his “Ka-Tet” actually get to the Dark Tower? And if so what they find there? I promise not to tell a soul and you will be making a dying woman very happy.
Sincerely,
Coretta Vele
Stowe, Vt.
I feel like such a shit when I think of how blithe I was concerning the ending of Waste Lands. I gotta answer Coretta Vele’s letter, but I don’t know how to. Could I make her believe I don’t know any more than she does about how Roland’s story finishes? I doubt it, and yet “that is the truth,” as Jake sez in his Final Essay. I have no more idea what’s inside that damned Tower than…well, than Oy does! I didn’t even know it was in a field of roses until it came off my fingertips and showed up on the screen of my new Macintosh computer! Would Coretta buy that? What would she say if I told her, “Cory, listen: The wind blows and the story comes. Then it stops blowing, and all I can do is wait, same as you.”
They think I’m in charge, every one of them from the smartest of the critics to the most mentally challenged reader. And that’s a real hoot.
Because I’m not.
September 22, 1992
The Grant edition of The Waste Lands is sold out, and the paperback edition is doing very well. I should be happy and guess I am, but I’m still getting a ton of letters about the cliffhanger ending. They fall into 3 major categories: People who are pissed off, people who want to know when the next book in the series is coming out, and pissed-off people who want to know when the next book in the series is coming out.
But I’m stuck. The wind from that quarter just isn’t blowing. Not just now, anyway.
Meanwhile, I have an idea for a novel about a lady who buys a picture in a pawnshop and then kind of falls into it. Hey, maybe it’ll be Mid-World she falls into, and she’ll meet Roland!
July 9th, 1994
Tabby and I don’t fight much since I quit drinking, but oboy, this morning we had a dilly. We’re at the Lovell house, of course, and as I was getting ready to leave on my morning walk, she showed me a story from today’s Lewiston Sun. It seems that a Stoneham man, Charles “Chip” McCaus-land, was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver while walking on Route 7. Which is the road I walk on, of course. Tabby tried to persuade me to stay on Turtleback Lane, I tried to persuade her that I had as much right to use Route 7 as anyone else (and honest to God, I only do half a mile on the blacktop), and things went downhill from there. Finally she asked me to at least stop walking on Slab City Hill, where the sightlines are so short and there’s nowhere to jump if someone happens to get off the road and onto the shoulder. I told her I’d think about it (it would have been noon before I got out of the house if we kept on talking), but in truth I’ll be damned if I’ll live my life in fear that way. Besides, it seems to me that this poor guy from Stoneham has made the odds of me getting hit while out walking about a million to one. I told this to Tabby and she said, “The odds of you ever being as successful at writing as you have been are even higher. You’ve said so yourself.”
To that I’m afraid I had no comeback.
June 19th, 1995 (Bangor)
Tabby and I just got back from the Bangor Auditorium where our youngest (and about four hundred of his classmates) finally got a diploma. He’s now officially a high school graduate. Bangor High and the Bangor Rams are behind him. He’ll be starting college in the fall and then Tab and I will have to start dealing w/ the ever-popular Empty Nest Syndrome. Everybody sez it all goes by in the wink of an eye and you say yeah yeah yeah …and then it does.
Fuck, I’m sad.
Feel lost. What’s it all for, anyway? (What’s it all about, Alfie, ha-ha?) What, just a big scramble from the cradle to the grave? “The clearing at the end of the path”? Jesus, that’s grim.
Meantime, we’re headed down to Lovell and the house on Turtleback
Lane this afternoon—Owen will join us in a day or two, he sez. Tabby knows I want to write by the lake, and boy, she’s so intuitive it’s scary. When we were coming back from the graduation exercises, she asked me if the wind was blowing again.
In fact it is, and this time it’s blowing a gale. I can’t wait to start the next volume of the DT series. Time to find out what happens in the riddling contest (that Eddie blows Blaine’s computerized mind with “silly questions”—i.e., riddles—is something I’ve known for several months now), but I don’t think that’s the major story I have to tell this time. I want to write about Susan, Roland’s first love, and I want to set their “cowboy romance” in a fictional part of Mid-World called Mejis (i.e., Mexico).
Time to saddle up and take another ride w/ the Wild Bunch.
Meantime, the other kids are doing well, although Naomi had some kind of allergic reaction, maybe to shell-fish…
July 19th, 1995 (Turtleback Lane, Lovell)
As on my previous expeditions to Mid-World, I feel like somebody who’s just spent a month on a jet-propelled rocket-sled. While stoned on hallucinatory happygas. I thought this book would be tougher to get into, much, but in fact it was once more as easy as slipping into a pair of comfortable old shoes, or those Western-style short-boots I got from Bally’s in New York 3 or 4 years ago and cannot bear to give up.
I’ve already got over 200 pages, and was delighted to find Roland and his friends investigating the remains of the superflu; seeing evidence of both Randall Flagg and Mother Abagail.
I think Flagg may turn out to be Walter, Roland’s old nemesis. His real name is Walter o’Dim, and he was just a country boy to start with. It makes perfect sense, in a way. I can see now how, to a greater or lesser degree, every story I’ve ever written is about this story. And you know, I don’t have a problem with that. Writing this story is the one that always feels like coming home.
Why does it always feel dangerous, as well? Why should I be so convinced that if I’m ever found slumped over my desk, dead of a heart attack (or wiped out on my Harley, probably on Route 7), it will be while working on one of these Weird Westerns? I guess because I know so many people are depending on me to finish the cycle. And I want to finish it! God, yes! No Canterbury Tales or Mystery of Edwin Drood in my portfolio if I can help it, thank you very much. And yet I always feel as if some anti-creative force is looking around for me, and that I am easier to see when I’m working on these stories.
Well, enough w/ the heebie-jeebies. I’m off on my walk.
September 2, 1995
I’m expecting the book to be done in another five weeks. This one has been more challenging, but still the story comes to me in wonderful rich details. Watched Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai last nite, and wonder if that might not be the right direction for Vol. #6, The Werewolves of End-World (or some such). I probably ought to see if any of the little side-o’-the-road video rental places around here have got The Magnificent Seven, which is the Americanized version of the Kurosawa film.
Speaking of side-o’-the-road, I almost had to dive into the ditch this afternoon to avoid a guy in a van—swerving from side to side, pretty obviously drunk—on the last part of Route 7 before I turn back into the relatively sheltered environs of Turtleback Lane. I don’t think I’ll mention this to Tabby; she’d go nuclear. Anyway, I’ve had my one “pedestrian scare,” and I’m just glad it didn’t happen on the Slab City Hill portion of the road.
October 19th, 1995
Took me a little longer than I thought, but I finished Wizard and Glass tonight…
August 19th, 1997
Tabby and I just said goodbye to Joe and his good wife; they’re on their way back to New York. I was glad I could give them a copy of Wizard and Glass. The first bunch of finished books came today. What looks & smells better than a new book, especially one w/ your name on the title page? This is the world’s best job I’ve got; real people pay me real money to hang out in my imagination. Where, I should add, the only ones who feel completely real to me are Roland and his ka-tet.
I think the CRs* are really going to like this one, and not just because it finishes the story of Blaine the Mono. I wonder if the Vermont Gramma with the brain tumor is still alive? I s’poze not, but if she was, I’d be happy to send her a copy…
July 6th, 1998
Tabby, Owen, Joe, and I went to Oxford tonight to see the film Armageddon. I liked it more than I expected, in part because I had my family w/ me. The movie is sfx-driven end-of-the-world stuff. Got me thinking about the Dark Tower and the Crimson King. Probably not surprising.
I wrote for awhile this morning on my Vietnam story, switching over from longhand to my PowerBook, so I guess I’m serious about it. I like the way Sully John reappeared. Question: Will Roland Deschain and his friends ever meet Bobby Garfield’s pal, Ted Brautigan? And just who are those low men chasing the old Tedster, anyway? More and more my work feels like a slanted trough where everything eventually drains into Mid-World and End-World.
The Dark Tower is my uber story, no question about that. When it’s done, I plan to ease back. Maybe retire completely.
August 7, 1998
Took my usual walk this afternoon, and tonight I took Fred Hauser with me to the AA meeting in Fryeburg. On the way home he asked me to sponsor him and I said yes; I think he’s finally getting serious about sobering up. Good for him. Anyhow, he got talking about the so-called “Walk-Ins.” He says there are more of them around the Seven Towns than ever, and all sorts of folks are gossiping about them.
“How come I never hear anything, then?” I asked him. To which I got no answer but an extremely funny look. I kept prodding, and finally Fred sez,
“People don’t like to talk about them around you, Steve, because there have been two dozen reported on Turtleback Lane in the last 8 months and you claim not to have seen a single one.”
To me this seemed like a non sequitur and I made no reply. It wasn’t until after the meeting—and after I’d dropped my new pigeon off—that I realized what he was saying: people don’t talk about the “Walk-Ins” around me because they think that in some crazy way I’M RESPONSIBLE. I thought I was pretty well used to being “America’s boogeyman,” but this is actually sort of outrageous…
January 2, 1999 (Boston)
Owen and I are at the Hyatt Harborside tonight, and head off to Florida tomorrow. (Tabby and I are talking about buying a place there but haven’t told the kids. I mean, they’re only 27, 25 and 21—maybe when they’re old enough to understand such things, ha-ha.) Earlier we met Joe and saw a film called Hurlyburly, from the play by David Rabe. Very odd. Speaking of odd, I had some sort of New Year’s Night nightmare before leaving Maine. Can’t remember exactly what it was, but when I woke up this morning I’d written two things in my dreambook. One was Baby Mordred, like something out of a Chas Addams cartoon. That I sort of understand; it must refer to Susannah’s baby in the Dark Tower stories. It’s the other thing that puzzles me. It says 6/19/99, O Discordia.
Discordia also sounds like something out of the DT stories, but it’s not anything I have invented. As for 6/19/99, that’s a date, right? Meaning what? June 19th of this year. Tabby and I should be back at the Turtleback Lane house by then, but so far as I can remember it’s not anybody’s birthday.
Maybe it’s the date I’m going to meet my first walk-in!
June 12, 1999
It’s wonderful to be back at the lake!
I’ve decided to take 10 days off, then finally return to work on the how-to-write book. I’m curious about Hearts in Atlantis; will folks want to know if Bobby Garfield’s friend Ted Brautigan plays a part in the Tower saga? The truth is I really don’t know the answer to that. In any case, readership of the Tower stories has fallen off a lot lately—the figures are really disappointing, compared to that of my other books (except for Rose Madder, which was a real tank-job, at least in the sales sense). But it doesn’t matter, at least to me, and if the series ever gets done, sale
s may go up.
Tabby and I had another argument about my walking route; she asked me again to quit going out on the main road. Also she asked me “Is the wind blowing yet?” Meaning am I thinking about the next Dark Tower story. I said no, commala-come-come, the tale has not begun. But it will, and there’s a dance called the commala in it. That’s the one thing I see clearly: Roland dancing. Why, or for whom, I don’t know.
Anyway, I asked T. why she wanted to know about the Dark Tower and she said, “You’re safer when you’re with the gunslingers.”
Joking, I suppose, but an odd joke for T. Not much like her.
June 17, 1999
Talked with Rand Holston and Mark Carliner tonight. They both sound excited about moving on from Storm of the Century to Rose Red (or Kingdom Hospital ), but either one would fill my plate up again.
I dreamed of my walk last night & woke up crying. The Tower will fall, I thought. O Discordia, the world grows dark.
????
Headline from the PortlandPress-Herald,June 18, 1999:
“WALK-IN” PHENOMENON IN WESTERN MAINE
CONTINUES TO RESIST EXPLANATION
June 19, 1999
This is like one of those times when all the planets line up, except in this case it’s my family all lined up here on Turtleback Lane. Joe and his family arrived around noon; their little boy is really cute. Say true! Sometimes I look in the mirror and say, “You are a grandfather.” And the Steve in the mirror just laughs, because the idea is so ridiculous. The Steve in the mirror knows I’m still a college sophomore, going to classes and protesting the war in Viet Nam by day, drinking beer down at Pat’s Pizza with Flip Thompson and George McLeod by night. As for my grandson, the beautiful Ethan? He just tugs on the balloon tied to his toe and laughs.
Daughter Naomi and son Owen got here late last night. We had a great Father’s Day dinner; people saying things to me that were so nice I had to check to make sure I wasn’t dead! God, I’m lucky to have family, lucky to have more stories to tell, lucky to still be alive. The worst thing to happen this week, I hope, will be my wife’s bed collapsing under the weight of our son and daughter-in-law—the idiots were wrestling on it.