As one of the world’s most acclaimed writers, Stephen King has often been described as “the king of horror.”

His books have sold more than 350 million copies, and many have been adapted into films and mini-series. King is the only author in history to have had more than 30 of his books become No. 1 best-sellers with hits like Carrie, The Shining, Misery, Cujo, and It.

King says he’s been a writer all his life, starting at age six when he started copying panels out of comic books and making up his own stories to go with the images. And why horror? Because, he says, writers write about their obsessions. It’s as simple and as complicated as that.

“The first movie I ever saw was a horror movie. It was Bambi,” he says. “When that little deer gets caught in a forest fire, I was terrified, but I was also exhilarated.”

His family grew up poor, although it’s a part of his life King doesn’t often discuss. When King was a child, his dad went out to buy cigarettes and never came back, leaving his wife and two children behind.

At age 26, King was a high school English teacher when he started writing the manuscript for the novel that would become Carrie. He and his wife Tabitha lived in a doublewide trailer and each had to work additional jobs to make ends meet, with King sometimes working at an industrial laundry and moonlighting as a janitor and gas pump attendant.

One day, Tabitha discovered the draft pages for what would become Carrie, a story about a high school girl who can control objects with her mind. But he had abandoned the manuscript because he became frustrated that he wasn’t able to write well from a female perspective.

So he crumpled up the pages and threw them in the trash can. When Tabitha was emptying the bin, she saw the papers and started reading.

Tabitha told him, “This is pretty good, you ought to keep it going.” King remembers: “That was all I needed and she knew it.” Over the next few weeks, she helped him develop Carrie’s voice and inspired him to continue. The final draft was done in nine months only to be rejected by 30 publishers.

And then one day, an editor from Doubleday Publishing offered him a $2,500 advance for Carrie, and the rest is history. To this day, King credits his wife for urging him to keep writing and helping launch his writing career. King said:

“There is a time in the lives of most writers when they are vulnerable, when the vivid dreams and ambitions of childhood seem to pale in the harsh sunlight of what we call the real world. In short, there’s a time when things can go either way. That vulnerable time for me came during 1971 to 1973. If my wife had suggested to me even with love and kindness and gentleness … that the time had come to put my dreams away and support my family, I would have done that with no complaint.”

He dedicated ‘Carrie’ to Tabitha writing: “This is for Tabby, who got me into it—and then bailed me out of it.”

Personally, I’ve learned a lot by studying King’s writing career. He taught me that the “muse” isn’t real, the adverb is not my friend, and that “writing is refined thinking.”

King believes that idea-generation is an active process, not a passive one.

He says, “Stories are found things, like fossils in the ground … Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world.”

Above all, King believes in the notion of “selfish writing,” which means writing for the pure pleasure and enjoyment of the craft. He says he has never written a single word for money — no matter just how much his family needed that money.

“Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends,” he says. “In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy okay? Getting happy.”

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