There isn’t anything I can say about Stephen King that most who know about Stephen King don’t already know. What I can say, however, is that learning about King’s backstory helped motivate me to continue writing my own. In a nutshell, King’s journey to success was theoretically simple, though in reality was an arduous one.
Man was a teacher who wrote in spare time; he thought the book he wrote was garbage and threw it in the bin. Wife finds “trashy book”, retrieves it from bin and encourages depressed writer to not give up on it. King eventually gets book in the hands of a publisher. And the rest as they say (as cliched as can possibly be said) was history.
How the Master of Horror motivated me
But King’s “rag’s to riches” story was not the primary element that helped me remained motivated. It was seeing how this man committed himself to successfully producing dozens of books over decades. And how he created a special name for himself as the master of the horror/thriller genre.
This is a genre where most writers give their best and still end up writing contrived stories that are truly frightening to read because they make you feel more irritable than thrilled upon reading them. Furthermore, the ability to have a dark mind that can easily create relatable worlds while living happily in the real one is a talent that must be respected.
I may never be Stephen King. But I must admit that reading stories like Gerald’s Game and Misery (my favorite Stephen King book by the way) has allowed me to appreciate and empathize with the depths of both light and darkness. Long live the King!
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