I hear you. Even when I was a kid, I didn't have the attention span for "The Stand." My favorite is his novella "The Long Walk." If you haven't checked that one out, you should.

I could never quite put my finger on why King was so popular until someone called him "folksy," and I got it. His good guys are good, his marriages usually happy, his bad guys really bad. But that's not why I don't read him anymore.

King himself has admitted many times that the way he writes is to put people in a situation and see how they react. His premises can be great. A town trapped under a dome. A woman and her son trapped in a car with a rabid dog outside. A family trapped at a haunted hotel.

He is famous for not outlining, instead just riffing; writing stream of consciousness. Sometimes this might stay interesting as he embellishes ("The Shining," "It"), other times, not so much ("10/22/63," the final Dark Tower book). When he was younger (and maybe more boozy and cocaine-addled) he came up with some really scintillating shit. Lately, though, I'm underwhelmed.

But I think it's this basic fundamental in the way he writes that supports what you're saying:

It's better in short form. The premise gets laid out, the characters react, it's cool / creepy / interesting, and then it's over. You don't have to read 600 pages of digressions and longueurs.

Besides the elephantitis, there's another flaw in this style, too. Perhaps, at least to me, more egregious. I write crime fiction, and while other genres are hard, mystery suspense thrillers have their own challenges, namely a plausible but completely surprising twist/reveal ending. With his book "The Outsider," King took a police procedural with a seemingly impossible premise -- how could a man have his DNA all over a dead body yet have been demonstrably hours away at the time of the murder? -- and he answers that :::SPOILER ALERT!!::: with something supernatural.

No. fucking. way dude.

But that's what happens when you're used to writing this seat of the pants style: you can just wrap up your book by revealing the monster (that was doing all of the impossible-seeming stuff) and then the protagonists kill it.

I still love the guy though. He's in my head as a writing coach. I get 2000 words a day because of him; I write a rough draft in three months or less. Like I said, "The Long Walk" is great, and I actually loved "The Wastelands" (I was 15). But he shines with the shorter stuff: "Skeleton Crew" is probably my all-time favorite book of his, a compilation of short stories.

Thanks for writing this article. Someone had to say it.