What It Is: Sometimes art reflects reality. In these instances, King's main characters are writers, just like King himself. This is notably seen in 1998's Bag Of Bones (featuring a writer named Mike Noonan who is suffering writer's block) and 1987's Misery (featuring a writer named Paul Sheldon who is held prisoner by an obsessed fan). That being said, there are plenty of other examples, like Salem's Lot, The Shining and 1408. What It Means: There might be some truth to Mike Noonan's plight in 1998's Bag Of Bones. In the novel, Noonan's writer's block is agonizing it's pretty much impossible for him to write anything but his laundry list. On a practical level, King's writing about writers allows him to pour certain real-life frustrations and aspirations into his characters. These details come from a very tangible place, and so they give King's characters an increased amount of believability. As a trope, writers tend to be the uninteresting, rather mundane protagonist that so many author's love. They're useful for multiple reasons, including the fact that they're more susceptible to the belief in the strange and peculiar, purely because many of them spend a whole lot of time writing about those very things. It also makes sense for writer characters to have complex internal monologues, as they're generally seen is intelligent, even if they are supposed to be boring.
