Stephen King on the Simple Horror of 'Carrie'

It's spooky season, so I have been going through a lot of retro horror movies and showing them to my one-year-old son, so he has a basis for the genre and can start ahead of all the other kids in daycare, who maybe haven't seen the classics.

This week, we tapped into Carrie, which also got him ready for school dances and pig's blood. After we finished watching, I dug up this archival interview clip from MPR News' Talking Volumes series, where legendary author Stephen King reflects on the genesis ofCarrie, which was actually his debut novel.

I found it to be a really insightful look at breaking in, breaking through, and getting your story to the public.

Let's dive in.

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1. Trust Your Creative Partners

I love listening to authors talk about their work and extrapolate the things that brought them to these stories and got them read.

The first anecdote in the interview is how Carrie almost ended up in the garbage.

King said Carrie started as a short story for men’s magazines, but he couldn't crack it, so he threw it away. Those were the typewriter days, and he tossed the pages into the trash. But his wife, Tabitha King, who fished the pages out and read them, knew there was something there.

That belief was enough to keep King going, toughing it out and finishing.

The Takeaway: Surround yourself with collaborators, editors, or trusted readers whose judgment you trust when your own inner critic takes over.

2. Stop Editing for the Market

Your voice is what makes you unique and valuable. King learned that on Carrie, which was like nothing else in the marketplace.

That's what made it special.

When he wrote it, King was locked into short fiction with tight word counts. It's all he did because that was the only avenue paying immediate cash.

But Carrie was never meant to be short, and King had to bet on himself to get that story out into the world. So he didn't take any money for the short version and made it longer, eventually a whole novel, that became his calling card.

The Takeaway: When you try to engineer a story to fit market trends, it may neuter what makes that story special. Instead, just write the best version.

3. The Reality of the Struggle

Writing is so hard. You often have to put in the late nights and early mornings, around side jobs, to get the attention you deserve.

Before the stardom, King was a high school teacher living in a small apartment with two young children, struggling to pay the bills. And let me tell you, I think that's a lot of our stories.

It took the hardcopy rights to Carrie being picked up by Doubleday, when King got $2500, that really started his career. That first paycheck gave them room to be a family and bought King the time he needed to finish other ideas.

The money didn't stop there.

Carrie became such a hit that the paperback rights sold for $400,000 (which is the equivalent to over $2.5 million today).

The rest is history.

The Takeaway: Yo ucan;t rush things. Do your best work, and take time to live and love your family. Your breaks will come if you accet that the hard work does pay off.

Summing It All Up

King's story is the one we all wish would be our own. A hardworking writer who finds his audience and never lets them go. It's one I go back to, just like Carrie is a movie and a book I go back to jsut ot see the flourishes of a great artist at the start of his career.

Keep dreaming and writing.