Brief Background
Anyone who reads books in the horror genre has eventually heard of the name Stephen King, even those who don’t read books have likely seen movies based on the books, whether that be Carrie, IT, The Shining, or even that strange movie about the evil car. Yet who is Stephen King? At first glance, he looks like the typical author: someone from a middle-class background who took some literature courses, rolled the dice, and became famous. However, when one reads his book, which in this case is “On Writing” by Stephen King, it becomes clear that in all honesty, Mr. King’s life should have ended up very differently, yet through his skill of writing and creating more human characters with intriguing storylines, he won his place among the Hall of the Great Horror authors.
Childhood
Stephen King’s book talks a lot about his early life before becoming an author, and when he speaks about his childhood, only one word comes to one’s mind. Traumatic. Considering the issues that he would face further in his life it is reasonable to understand where he came from he was born into a lower class family with a single mother and a brother, now whether Stephen King chose to excerpt the worst parts of his childhood in his book it’s unknown however the parts that he does illustrate are quite traumatic for a child such as the time where a wasp stung him in his eardrum which caused him to go through excruciating medical procedures to remove the infection which would have caused a lost hearing to an incident involving poison ivy, even after all these scenarios he heads into his middle school and high school career where he understands his enjoyment of writing which she knew as a child when he plagiarized many stories from movies and began to create his own stories where he became the newspaper editor as well as editing an actual newspaper to creating stories that he would send off to newspapers which would buy them for $20 or more dollars. Yet all this shows that his books not only come from his mind but also from personal experience and a true understanding of people.
Adulthood & Rise in Writing
For someone of Stephen King’s status he wasn’t able to focus full-time on writing being from a lower class family it meant that he had to get a career to support himself and eventually when he got into college to support his family after he and his wife had a child however that did not mean that he stopped writing completely he wrote plenty of novels many of them just selling for a couple dozen dollars however he truly found his shine in his one novel named “Carrie” now those who are familiar with this book know that it is a cult classic and when it became a movie that became a cult classic but what few people know is who wrote it personally I did not know that Stephen King made many of the films that became cult classics and when I learned about it it made me grow a further appreciation for his writing however his life did not improve drastically when he became enriched he continued to suffer from many plagues to his biological form such as addiction to many illicit substances which as he admits is extremely illegal for him to possess but understanding where he comes from it is not out of the equation that this would have happened to him. However, as he rose in social standing, he was able to devote more time to his writing, which eventually led him to write many popular books, the most famous of which is “IT,” which continues to interest horror fans to this day.
So What?
Throughout this and the entire article, the life of Stephen King is discussed, yet the true question remains: why does this matter? The reason that has great importance is it really shines a light on what makes writers writers is that their childhood is it just their mind that they were born with however for Stephen King It can be seen as a combination of both every event in his life culminated into what he became to this very day it culminated to his art in writing one event cannot be shown to made him a writer all of these events combined made him who he is as an author To This Day which should make everyone have a greater appreciation for authors and other in simple words artists.
