Thrive: 30 Inspirational Rags-to-Riches Stories

Stephen King

Stephen Edwin King was born in Portland, Maine. When he was two years old, his father left the family under the pretense of "going to buy a pack of cigarettes," but never returned. This left his mother, Nellie, all alone to raise Stephen and his older brother, David, under great financial strain. Nellie struggled to make ends meet for the family and often held two to three jobs at a time. Parts of Stephen's childhood were spent with his father's family in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in Stratford, Connecticut, and in Durham, Maine, where Nellie had taken care of her incapacitated parents.

From an early age, Stephen wanted to become a successful writer. He contributed articles to David's local newspaper, David's Rag. In high school, Stephen held a part-time job digging graves, which inspired him to write the short story, "I Was a Teenage Grave Robber," a tale about an orphan boy who accepts a job digging up bodies for a mad scientist. Although he was not paid, College Review accepted the short story. After all of the rejection letters Stephen had received thus far, he was finally in print.

After high school, Stephen enrolled at the University of Maine. He wrote every day and received his first check for $35 from Startling Mystery Stories for his short story, "The Glass Door," during his freshman year. As one of his professors put it, "We had many students who had aspired to become writers. What made Stephen different, from the beginning, was that not only did he aspire to become a writer, but he just went ahead and did it." He was active around campus in the antiwar movement and in student government, and starting from his sophomore year, Stephen wrote a weekly column for the student newspaper, The Maine Campus. However, writing was not earning him a living. To supplement the $5 per week his mother sent him, which Stephen later found out meant his mother would often live without eating, he took a job at the university library, where he met his wife, Tabitha Spruce.

The same year he graduated from the University of Maine with a Bachelor of Arts in English, Stephen was married and about to become a father. Living in a trailer park with his wife and daughter, and struggling to find work as a teacher, Stephen worked at a gas station for minimum wage and in a laundromat for $1.60 per hour. Tabitha worked nights at Dunkin' Donuts. Times were so hard that his family often had their phone disconnected, as they could not afford to pay their bills.

A year later, at twenty-four years old, Stephen found work as an English teacher at the Hampden Academy, a public high school, earning $4,600 per year. After their second child, Stephen took a job at the laundromat to supplement the income from his teaching job. After working all day, grading papers, and preparing lessons at home, Stephen retired to the trailer's furnace room to write for at least two hours each night. Earning around $200 per story, he developed an outlet for publishing stories via men's magazines.

Although Stephen was writing stories as fast as he could, his financial obligations mounted up. He vented his frustrations by smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol at the local bar. He began writing a short story about Carrietta White, the daughter of an unstable religious fanatic, which he hoped to sell for a few hundred dollars to a magazine. However, Stephen felt he didn't know enough about teenage girls to be true to the character and threw his first draft in the trashcan. Tabitha found the draft, read it, and insisted he finish writing it. With his wife's help, Stephen finished Carrie (1974) in two weeks' time and sent it to an editor at Doubleday, who had previously accepted (and rejected) several of his manuscripts. The editor, pleased, asked him to make a few changes and resubmit his manuscript. Stephen did, and moved on with his writing and his life.

Then, one day at school, Stephen was called into the main office from the loudspeaker for a call from his wife. As he made his way to the office, Stephen's heart was beating rapidly. One of two things must've happened. Either something was wrong with one of his children, or he published his book. As they had their phone disconnected, Tabitha received a telegram from the editor at Doubleday stating they were going to publish Carrie and pay Stephen an advance of $2,500. Excited, Stephen and Tabitha spent the advance on a new car and moved into a small apartment.

Although life was better for his family, Stephen kept his day job of being an English teacher. He received a telephone call one day from the editor at Doubleday saying they sold the paperback rights for Carrie for $400,000. Stephen was entitled to half, meaning he was to receive $200,000, more money than he'd ever dreamed of. Upon hearing the news, Stephen dropped the phone and, as all of the strength had left his legs, slid down the wall behind him. Tabitha cried, and they embraced each other in their tiny apartment. Carrie sold over 1 million paperback copies within its first year and was also adapted into a major motion picture.

Stephen King has published more than fifty novels that have sold over 350 million copies worldwide. Many of his novels have also been adapted into feature films.