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Steinbeck and King both explore the relationship of the life of a writer to the life of others around him. They consider both the physical resources, and also the more abstract needs of a writer. Both write from a first person perspective, but while Steinbeck’s text is in the form of a diary, King’s text combines memoir and advice, so also has a direct address to the ‘you’ of the reader. These differences in text type affect the structure, so that Steinbeck’s diary is quite unstructured, following an almost stream of consciousness as different ideas occur to him. However, in the extract from On Writing King structures his text around what might be the most important furniture for a writer: the desk.

The desk is a common element of the writer’s life in both texts, but in King’s it is much more important. He talks about the ‘massive oak slab’ he ‘dreamed of’ for years; the physical dominance of the desk reflects its dominance in King’s idea of a writer’s life. This physical dominance is emphasised by the later metaphor of the ‘T.Rex desk’ – the image of the predatory dinosaur has connotations both of ridiculousness, but also of danger. In contrast, the extract from Steinbeck’s diary has a simple ‘drafting table’, and the chair seems to be more important – the ‘fantastic chair’. Furniture is clearly important to the writer’s life: Steinbeck also explores the idea of writing in bed, as Mark Twain did, but seems suspicious of it. There is the problem of being too comfortable, and Steinbeck jokes about going to sleep if that is the case.

This paradox of needing to be comfortable but not too comfortable is not the only paradox in the texts. Steinbeck notes the paradox of having everything you need to write (with the alliteration of the ‘perfect pointed pencil’) but ‘no writing’. A similar contrast arises in Text B, when King notes having the perfect desk, yet being on ‘a voyage to nowhere’.

The comfort which Steinbeck enjoys is down to the care of his wife, who takes care of the ‘outside details’ to give him ‘free untroubled writing time.’ This is an aspect of the writer’s life which is presented differently in each text. King does not want to be detached from life, instead on insisting that his desk must be ‘in the corner’, not ‘in the middle of the room’: he prefers to have his family around him. He sums this up in the final metaphor of the extract from his memoir: that art is the ‘support-system’ for life, not the other way around. Steinbeck, however, seems to require his ‘beloved’ to be a support-system for his writing. The contrast may also be reflected in the tone of the two texts: Text A is quite elevated in its tone and vocabulary (‘a most treacherous animal full of his treasured contradictions’) but King writes in a deliberately down to earth way of the ‘job’ of writing.

So despite the similarity of the focus on the material needs of the writer, in terms of furniture, and the fear of ‘no writing’ hinted at in both texts, there is a fundamental difference between the presentation of the life of the writer in each text. That contrast is between Steinbeck’s need to be released from the reality of life to produce ‘anything’, and King’s need to be always in the corner, with life going on around him.

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This answer:

• moves from one text to another throughout
• considers the ideas in the text, the language and the structure
• shows both the similarities and the differences of the text, and links them together
• uses plenty of quotations, which are embedded into sentences
• has a clear introduction and a clear conclusion
• includes points about the text that are developed and linked to other points