Author Stephen King on the left with the cover of Carrie’s hardcopy on the right. Image credits: Wikimedia Commons
At an early age, King had allegedly developed an interest in writing, with his first professional short story, The Glass Floor, being published in 1967 in Starling Mystery Stories . Stephen King continued his education and graduated from the University of Maine in 1970. He got married to Tabitha in January 1971. In the autumn of 1971, King secured an English teaching job at Hampden Academy in Maine. In an interview with Yankee Magazine in 1979, he recalled that he was working at the laundry during the summer when he started writing Carrie .
Way before Stephen Edwin King became a renowned author in the horror genre, he had to support his living through a series of odd jobs in Maine. At Brunswick High School, he worked as a janitor and was once assigned to clean the girls’ shower room. Years later, while financially struggling and working at an industrial laundry, King revisited the memory of that unfamiliar setting while developing an idea about an isolated teen girl experiencing her first period. Eventually, this scene became the opening sequence of Carrie , his first published novel. Stephen King reportedly grew up experiencing financial difficulties. His parents, Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King, separated when he was still young. Following their separation, Stephen and his older brother David were raised by their mother. He later attended the University of Maine at Orono, where he studied English and contributed to the student newspaper. The journey from a school janitor to an industrial laundry w orker During one summer while attending college, Stephen King took a janitorial job at the school. In his memoir, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft , the writer shared that he was assigned to scrub rust stains from the walls of the girls’ shower room alongside another worker. He remembered seeing two metal boxes mounted on the wall, which he subsequently learned contained tampons. This experience later gained relevance when King started imagining a story about a teenage girl facing humiliation at school. However, this incident did not immediately make its way into the novel. He graduated with a degree in English and qualifications to teach at the high school level. After his graduation, King initially struggled to find a teaching position. The couple relied on King’s earnings from the industrial laundry where he worked as a labourer. In addition to that, they also relied on Tabitha’s student loan, savings and King’s occasional payments from his short-story sales. At the industrial laundry, his responsibilities involved handling large quantities of commercial linen, such as motel sheets, restaurant tablecloths and hospital garments. Stephen continued writing whenever he could manage a little time, sometimes even finding time in between lunch breaks. This position offered a more stable source of income. However, it did not immediately end the family’s financial challenges, and King continued writing after his shift at school and returned to the industrial laundry for summer work.
