Stephen King

The little engine that could

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Our biggest choice in life is who we choose to marry.

When Stephen King was 26, he worked as a teacher and lived in a trailer park with his wife Tabitha.

They were poor, and they worked extra jobs to make ends meet.

One day - when Tabitha was taking out the trash - she found the manuscript for what would later become Carrie. Frustrated by his inability to write from the female perspective, Stephen threw his work away.

He gave up. But Tabitha never did. She took the pages out of the trash and encouraged her husband to keep writing.

“That was all I needed and she knew it,” Stephen remembers.

Together, they developed Carrie’s voice, and nine months later the book was finished. (Only to be rejected by 30 publishers).

“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.”

Most writers don’t wake up every morning with a burning passion to write.

Most runners don’t wake up every morning with a burning passion to run.

Most visionaries don’t wake up every morning with a burning passion to envision.

The little wins add up. Writers can teach us a lot about consistency and meeting deadlines. And spouses hold us accountable.

P.S. I think a lot about this guy named Roger Banniser. In 1956, he was the first runner to break the four minute mile. There were all these studies on why people couldn’t run that fast. For decades, people tried, but nobody could do it. Then, Roger Bannister came along and did it, and suddenly, everyone could too.

It was never a physical barrier, just a psychological one.

Most of us aren’t that smart. And we aren’t that stupid. We’re just products of the people we surround ourselves with. Surround yourself with people who believe in you more than you do.

And that’s the skinny.