20 Mind-Blowing Facts You Never Knew About Stephen King
14. Carrie Originally Ended Up In The Trash
Really, the fact that Carrie got published at all is something of a miracle. King himself has looked back at the success that spawned his whole career with a sense of shock and surprise, correctly noting that it was written after Rosemary's Baby, but before The Exorcist, which really opened up the field. The supernatural horror was still a fairly pulpy sub-genre and not widely read.
And yet Carrie wound up being a best seller, putting King on the map and earning him a contract for his next few novels that meant he could quit his crummy day jobs. At the time, it was difficult for King to see that he was doing something that was even worth writing, let alone publishable.
I thought, 'Who'd want to read a book about a poor little girl with menstrual problems?' I couldn't believe I was writing it. In fact he was so lacking in confidence about the novel that, whilst originally working on Carrie as a short story for Playboy-style men's magazine Cavalier, he gave up and tossed his first three finished pages in the trash. It was only when his wife Tabitha fished them out and insisted he finish the story that his career really kicked off.