Carrie
by Stephen King · first published 1974
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2009–2026first – last mentioned
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The story of misfit high-school girl, Carrie White, who gradually discovers that she has telekinetic powers. Repressed by a domineering, ultra-religious mother and tormented by her peers at school, her efforts to fit in lead to a dramatic confrontation during the senior prom. (source)
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…by Laurence Peter 6. Dubliners by James Joyce 7. Lorna Doone by Richard Doddridge Blackmore 8. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig 9. M*A*S*H by Richard Hooker 10. Carrie by Stephen King 11. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell 12. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle 13. Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison by Charles Shaw 14. Dune by Frank Herbert And direct links…
on “14 Best-Selling Books Repeatedly Rejected by Publishers” ↗https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill_as_writer#Wr... Stephen King began writing Carrie, his first published novel, when he was working as a janitor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrie_(novel)#Publication_his... (although by the time it was actually published, he was a high-school teacher).
on “Writers on their day jobs” ↗His writing is pretty bad in the original Foundation trilogy, but it was his early work. He got a lot better later on. Have you read Stephen King's first novel, Carrie? The writing is awful. And yes, there are a lot of direct cold war references in something like Fantastic Voyage II that make it seem outdated, but I think that his really futuristic stuff doesn't have…
on “Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, by Eliezer Yudkowsky” ↗…but is it crazy enough to be correct!" It also reminds one of how some of our most successful books in publishing history have been rejected dozens of times by publishers - Harry Potter by JK Rowling, Carrie by Stephen King, Dr. Seuss' books, plus many others.
on “Black Swan Farming” ↗…this story is a watered-down version of the real story. If you don't want to dedicate the time to reading On Writing, King also references this story nicely in the introduction to most recent versions of Carrie.
on “Stephen King – How did a misfit high school girl change the author's life?” ↗Stephen King definitely has a chance, not particularly for his craft, but his memorable characters. Carrie, It, Christine, Annie Wilkes, and Jack Torrance to name a few. Granted, movies will definitely help his longevity.
on “Why the Novel Matters” ↗> Nobody else got to fail as much as Jobs and kept getting free passes though Stephen King had his first book Carrie rejected 30 times. The author of Dr Seuss had his first book rejected by 27 different publishers. Walt Disney was fired from one of his first animation jobs. Everyone fails. Not everyone gives up.
on “27 years ago, Steve Jobs said the best employees focus on content, not process” ↗…really into graph theory and applying to a small newcomer company called Google. For a concrete example: in his book "On writing" Stephen King details his life up until the point he hit it big with "Carrie". You could say he was lucky for the book to sell as good as it did, but that would require ignoring that he had been writing (and getting rejected!) non-stop for roughly 20 years.
on “I hated writing–until I learned there's a science to it(2024)” ↗