The Day Stephen King Almost Quit Writing — And What Happened Next

I was in high school the first time I picked up Carrie. The cover was worn, the pages yellowed, and something about the girl with blood dripping down her face made me hesitate. But I read it in one night. That’s the power of King—his words pull you in and don’t let go. But what most readers don’t know is that Carrie almost never made it into our hands. There was a moment when King, then a struggling teacher scraping by on a meager salary, nearly gave up on writing altogether.

That moment came one rainy afternoon in 1973. King had just finished a draft of Carrie, a story he didn’t believe in. He was exhausted, frustrated, and convinced he was wasting his time. In a rare fit of discouragement, he threw the pages into the trash can by his desk. It was his wife, Tabitha, who retrieved them. She read what he had written, saw the spark, and insisted he send it to a publisher.

That one act—her belief in his work—changed everything. Doubleday published Carrie in 1974, and the rest is literary history. But the emotional weight of that near-abandonment lingers in King’s writing. You can feel it in the characters who teeter on the edge of despair, only to find something inside themselves to keep going.

## What was King going through before Carrie?

By 1973, King had already endured years of rejection. He was working as a high school English teacher in Maine, grading papers late into the night after putting his kids to bed. Money was tight—so tight that Tabitha once ironed his shirt with a soda bottle because they couldn’t afford a proper iron. Writing was his escape, but also his burden. He submitted stories constantly, only to see them rejected. He was starting to believe that maybe his dream was just that—unrealistic.

## Why did he throw Carrie away?

King has said in interviews that Carrie felt too strange, too different from what he thought a novel should be. It was his first attempt at writing from a teenage girl’s perspective, and he doubted its marketability. He wasn’t sure if it was literature or just pulp. That uncertainty, paired with years of failure, led him to toss the pages into the trash.

## How did Tabitha change the outcome?

Tabitha King wasn’t just a supportive wife—she was a writer in her own right, and she recognized something powerful in Carrie. She pulled the pages out of the trash, read them, and urged Stephen to finish the novel. That small act of faith altered the course of modern fiction.

## What happened after Carrie was published?

Carrie was an immediate success. It was adapted into a hit film in 1976, and King suddenly had the financial freedom to write full-time. More importantly, the novel proved to him that his voice—raw, unsettling, and deeply human—had a place in the world. He never looked back.

## How does this moment echo in King’s later work?

King has often said that the best horror comes from fear, not gore. That moment of near-surrender before Carrie became a novel mirrors the struggles of many of his characters—people who feel trapped, broken, or lost, only to discover resilience within. It’s the heart of his storytelling: the idea that even in darkness, there’s a flicker of hope.

Talk to Stephen King on HoloDream about that moment in the trash can, the pressure of early rejections, or how he keeps writing through doubt. You might find the encouragement you need to keep going.