How Stephen King Saved My Life
Or More Accurately, How I Came Back to the Page
The title’s an exaggeration. It should read something more along the lines of, “How Stephen King Made Me Remember That Writing Was Really Important to Me at One Time but I Dropped It for Complicated Reasons and Forgot.” But I don’t know. That just doesn’t have a snappy ring to it.
In March of 2020, my job sent me home.
I’m one of those white collar workers who did not stay on the front lines during the world’s biggest pandemic since the Spanish flu. Instead, I sat my happy ass at my house, helped homeschool my kids, and got a big break. At least in a lot of ways. The year before that, my husband and I were working full time while I was finishing my sixth year in college getting a computer science degree with two little kids. For years I had been running on empty. I’m still more tired than your average human on a daily basis, and I think it’s because of sleep debt. Seriously.
So the pandemic was scary and traumatic because what the hell is Covid and will I die buying groceries, but also can I maybe take a few needed naps now, and what is my purpose if I’m not killing myself working? Here’s the kicker. I couldn’t even do most of my work from home, so I was cut down to two days per week, alternating with coworkers, and working on call the rest of the time. (News flash - I didn’t get called much).
I hadn’t read for years. At least, not like I used to. There are a lot of reasons for that. Some of those get covered further down in this article, but most of it had to do with what you already know. I was in school with little kids and a job. That about covers it I think. So part of being at home more, I decided, was going to be reading. I love it. I was an avid reader in my childhood, a proud finisher of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Diary of Anne Frank in the third grade.
Granted, I didn’t understand a lot of the words that I sounded out phonetically (including Nazi, which I proudly pronounced Nae-zee to my mother before being corrected). I definitely didn’t understand Mark Twain’s story. The language was beyond my grasp. But I prided myself on being a “smart kid.” I was one of those obnoxious know-it-all’s who carried the big books around for all the adults to see and comment on.1 But at this time, 32 years old and just catching up with myself after surviving my twenties, I was decidedly not well read. Am still not. (Send me your suggestions!) A surprise to any of you out there who saw me lugging those books around. I guess you never can tell.
So I did start reading. The news. I think we all were, watching and waiting to see what the scientific world would find out about Covid and how bad it really was. In between episodes of Tiger King and Reddit threads dedicated to Carol Baskin. It was too much, so one late night, in a state of news induced anxiety, I decided to read a Stephen King book. I don’t remember if I’d heard about this book before. I don’t remember if I’d ever read it. For some reason I bought and read it that night using the Kindle app on my phone. That book was On Writing.
Until that point, I had only read what are arguably Stephen King’s more mediocre works (though I have to say I was and am a fan, even of those). The ones that came out of cocaine infused states of inspiration I guess, Tommyknockers being the last one that I remember finishing before thinking, yup, that was weird.
Don’t get me wrong. There were parts of it, many parts in fact, that I liked. I just didn’t know if he was as good a writer as everyone said. (And I write that sentence knowing there’s plenty who say he isn’t. I love him. So kick rocks.) I did have sleepless memories of reading The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon in my bed late at night when I was around 12 or 13 years old. The sense of dread that overtook me and a complete inability to put the book down, but that was the last time I had thoroughly enjoyed King.
Around that age, in 6th grade if memory serves me, I got saved. I’m assuming most Americans know the term here. But if you don’t, I mean I became a Christian. A protestant, evangelical Christian to be exact.
I went to a summer camp with my cousin in Wyoming. It was a great time filled with the normal summer camp happenings. Crafts and songs and sleeping in cabins. And, if you were raised Christian or ever went to some Foursquare Baptist youth camp, you’ll know the other parts. I won’t spend long on them, but it boils down to an old man preaching about how to know if you’re going to heaven, and why you would want to go there.2
So when my camp leader asked me that night if I was saved (I wasn’t), I looked her square in the eyes and told her that I was. Then I whispered some version of the sinner’s prayer in bed and made my mind up to get right before God.3 When the camp was over, my cousin and I spent a couple more weeks with her half-sister, a bible thumper nearly 50 years older than her.
She was a sweet lady. She kept animals, she loved to work helping impoverished children, and she had plenty of gospel tracts around the house to keep me busy.4 I don’t remember a TV in her house. Either that or she didn’t let us watch the one that was there. I do remember spending hot summer evenings bored out of my mind.
I was raised on TV. I had one in my bedroom from the time I was eight years old. It was there to keep me busy, and maybe to keep me out of the way. It worked. I watched it any time I was bored or couldn’t sleep with zero restrictions. Most nights, it was on all night. It wasn’t until I moved out of the house and couldn’t afford one that I got used to sleeping in the dark with no noise.
Suffice it to say, the TV-less silence on those ten or fifteen acres was a lot to bear, and my newfound anxieties around Hell and my eternal soul were on my mind. So I would read those tracts and recite the sinner’s prayer again and again. There was some version of it at the end of each pamphlet.
When I returned home, it was with a new book I bought at a Christian bookstore somewhere in Lander, Wyoming. I can’t remember the name of it, but I do remember that it taught me about backmasking, Satanism, the evils of D&D (Dungeons and Dragons), and the occult. I was scared straight, and I went back to Colorado after only a few weeks under this woman’s care, a brand new, born-again Christian.
I would not listen to rock music. I did not read anymore Stephen King (That didn’t happen until years after, when I made my way out of a fundamentalist church in my mid-twenties). I stopped midway through the Harry Potter series in 8th grade after my church let me know it was influenced by the devil. And I developed an irrational fear of demons, in everyone and everything. Hiding in the obvious (Marilyn Manson), and the seemingly benign (Oprah).
I denied any music that wasn’t Christian, did not read books unless they were Christian, and stopped watching most shows or movies unless they were, you guessed it, Christian. I went to deliverance prayer services to shed the demons that so obviously plagued me (I was born in a relatively unstable household), and determined that I would be a missionary in Africa when I grew up. I also felt strongly that I would probably be martyred, as was talked about often in my church.
Fiction, in the context of my mind, was an impossibility. Not only totally uninteresting in the context of “reality” (hello, the end times are coming and people need to be saved), but almost extravagant, as bad as overeating in front of a starving child. Useless. If I’m honest, and that is part of the point here, I think I looked down on fiction and story in general, and also on the people who read it. I lost touch with my own soul. I was an avid reader in childhood, an early writer (starting in 2nd grade), and on a trajectory to enjoy and participate in globs of artistic pursuits.
Looking back, I can see that I threw it all in the garbage, starting that night in a dark cabin in the mountains, at only 12 years old. I burned it on a sacrificial altar for Jesus. It took a long time to take it back. I’m still taking it back.
“Writing is not life, but I think that sometimes it can be a way back to life.”
— Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Laying in my bed next to my sleeping husband, twenty years from that decision in a top bunk in Wyoming, I cried. I read On Writing, and I cried. Because I always wanted to write, and somehow, in the strange and largely unpleasant journey I took into adulthood, I had forgotten.
For someone who has not grown up in a fundamentalist mindset, this will likely be very hard to understand. But for the fundamentalist, art is impossible. And I am not only speaking about Christian or even strictly religious fundamentalism here. (More on that in future writings). They may claim otherwise, but there’s a reason that the books and movies and shows I watched that are made under the label of being evangelical Christian, are mostly utter flops (I say mostly to be generous, but it may be that all of them are in fact flops). My self-restriction to evangelical Christian books and art may have been part of why I gave up on it altogether.
Another part of it, is that to be ultra religious, you have to lie. At least I did. You have to deny yourself. Spiritually, yes. But also, individually. For me, that meant the parts that made me a unique person. I desperately wanted to fit in, so I tried to make sure to believe in the same things, in the same way as the people around me.
I did not admit to yearning (almost always sin), or pain (unless it was in a prayer time or confession setting). I phrased everything in Christian terms, even in my private journals. They all read like some long, saintly poem. I’ve thrown many out because they are not honest, and they did not reflect the things that I went through during that time in my life. When I read Lit by Mary Karr, I realized that I was a liar after all, and that until I was willing to be honest, I would never be able to write. This passage, in which Etheridge Knight tries to pull the truth into her poetry, has always stuck with me.
“Etheridge used a pen to poke the fedora back on his head. Looking at me with bloodshot eyes, he asked with frank curiosity, Now, why is a little girl from Bumfuck, Texas, dragging Friedrich Nietzsche—kicking and screaming—into this poem? Like you’re gonna preach. You ain’t no preacher, Mary Karr. You’re a singer.
When I bristled that I’d been a philosophy major in college, he said, And that’s all you’re telling anybody. What you took in college. You’re pointing right back at your own head, telling everybody how smart it is. Write what you know.
But according to you, I don’t know squat.
Your heart, Mary Karr, he’d say. His pen touched my sternum, and it felt for all the world like the point of a dull spear as he said, Your heart knows what your head don’t. Or won’t.”— Mary Karr, Lit
And so that brings me here, to the page.
In 2020 I read On Writing, and I remembered that this is what I want to do. If I’m being really honest, and really vulnerable, I believe I was meant to do it (whatever that means). Not that I am guaranteed to make anything of it monetarily, although I’ll try my hardest, because making it will free up more time for me to do it. But that I will honor what was inside of me, a tiny flame, from the very beginning. That is all we have to go on down here.
I started writing short stories, ideas that would come blaring into my head during chores or on runs. (I thought that happened to everyone, but my husband assures me that not everybody gets story fragments racing through their minds on the regular.) The writing was bad. It had been a long time since I tried to string sentences together. But I liked doing it. The muscle was flexing, and my heart was opening. It still is.
I started a novel the year after. It’s clunky and probably won’t go anywhere, but I get lost writing it. The page opens, and I’m there with those people, in their houses and lives. Fighting monsters and demons. Knowing their secrets. Telling the truth through a lie.
I am a writer, and so, dear reader, if you’ve made it this far, that is why I’m writing this. I’ll cover books, movies, censorship, fundamentalism, weird stories (non-fiction ones in this case), and I’ll write some stories for you too. Because I remembered that it’s what I want to do. It may be one of the only things I truly care about doing. I hope you enjoy reading this experiment in story telling. If you know someone who would like it, please share it with them.
I’m sure it will be strange along the way, but hang with me. I think it’s going to be a good ride.
I wasn’t the only one. There was a math nerd who shall not be named. If you’re out there and you’re reading this, I remember you asking everyone to quote the square root of 75 in third grade. And 8.7 wouldn’t suffice. No rounding my friend. He wanted the full 6 digits after the decimal. So what did I do? Naturally, I put it into my calculator, memorized it, and quoted it to him as if by sheer Matilda-like brilliance, I had come to this answer on my own. It took the wind out of his sails, and I have to admit, third grade me lapped it all up.
It’s not rocket science. It’s to avoid the burning fires of Hell.
A prayer that gets you to heaven. If you don’t know it, it goes something like this: Dear Lord Jesus, I know that I am a sinner, and I ask you for Your forgiveness. I believe You died for my sins and rose from the dead. I turn from my sins and invite You to come into my heart and life. I want to trust and follow You as my Lord and Savior. In Your Name. Amen.
A brief pamphlet used for evangelism purposes. If you’re a server who has ever gotten the famed hundred dollar bill that details Christian salvation and eternal life through Jesus (but does not pay your bills), then you’re familiar with the idea.
I can relate to so many points from your story. One is the restrictions we impose on ourselves in the name of religion or spirituality. I was part of a religious group (not Christian) for a couple of years and had the same experience regarding the quality of art and writing created within that context. It was mostly below mediocre. Interestingly, I grew up in communism and it had the same effect on art. And science for that matter. Creativity needs freedom. Years after I left the religious group I met a man who used to be an upstanding member of that group. He seemed like a shadow of himself. He told me that he had recently allowed himself to read again a bit of literature outside the religion. He seemed so happy about it but also somewhat guilty. The things we do to ourselves. I’m happy I got out relatively fast and unscathed.
“ I burned it on a sacrificial altar for Jesus. It took a long time to take it back. I’m still taking it back.” “ Laying in my bed next to my sleeping husband, twenty years from that decision in a top bunk in Wyoming, I cried. I read On Writing, and I cried. Because I always wanted to write, and somehow, in the strange and largely unpleasant journey I took into adulthood, I had forgotten.” I love loved your transparency, I completely related to you in my own personal way. I loved the flow of words and thoughts. Keep up the good work.