An excerpt from my blog. Read the full post here!: http://cristinaguarino.livejournal.co... 
 I have to say, Carrie wasn't as great as I was expecting. Now, a bit of back story: the first Stephen King novel I've ever read was Misery, and it's easily one of my favorite novels of all time. I liked it so much that I immediately purchased and read his memoir/writing guide On Writing, which I devoured and have considered to be my writing bible ever since. 
 On Writing had a huge effect on me as a writer. Since reading it, I've taken much of it as doctrine, especially the rule about minimal use of adverbs (at least in my creative pursuits). King talks a bit about Carrie in On Writing, and upon realizing that it was his first novel, I was really interested in reading it. I wanted to see how he got where he is, what his beginnings looked like, and if he grew exponentially as a writer or was just already great upon starting. 
 Well, I got my answer. 
 Carrie isn't a bad book by any means, but it's pretty fast-paced--understandable, as debut novels are often short and the major events streamlined--and riddled with adverbs. A lot of them. 
 I was pretty shocked at just how many, actually. Maybe I was hypersensitive to them after reading On Writing and knowing his somewhat extremist stance on them (basically, that they should never be used, although he can forgive a rare one), but they seemed to plague Carrie. And they weren't even well-used. Example: 
 "She looked around bovinely" (6). 
 What is that? "Bovinely" isn't even a word, and if I had to guess, I'd say that Stephen King isn't a fan of making up words to make writing easier. He says himself that adverbs are tools of lazy writers, and this just seemed to scream lazy to me: he had already explained that Carrie was fat, but he clearly wanted to emphasize it. How did he do that? By adding in that bomb of a (fake) adverb. 
 What does it even mean to "look around bovinely?" Do cows have a certain way of looking around, or did the way she do it accentuate her weight? How could turning her head from side to side accomplish that? It's just confusing. 
 That was the line that inspired me to write this post. I'm not bashing King in any way--I absolutely love him and think he's brilliant, and if you've stuck around this long, you'll notice that I use adverbs quite a bit on occasion--but I couldn't help but explore it a bit more. 
 Here are a few other quotes from On Writing: 
 121 - "I've spilled out my share of adverbs in my time" (yeah, you have! Open up to any page in Carrie. Try to find one without an adverb). 
 119: "I can be a good sport about adverbs, though" (I'd hope so. I wouldn't want to see him beat himself up over Carrie). 
 It's funny, because he seems to be so against them one minute, and then using them liberally (!) the next. In fact, if I could ask King anything, it'd probably be how he feels when he looks back at Carrie so many years later.