Stephen King | The success story of the legendary storyteller

Stephen King is one of the top best selling authors with around eighty-seven books published. He has terrified, horrified and entertained millions of readers and viewers worldwide. His journey to success was not an easy one. He went through a lot of hardships and rejections But he never gave up despite the several failures he endured. He failed epically and repeatedly, but he strongly believed these to be a major part of his success. It is very much true that it only takes one success to erase several failures and people often don’t know the several failures endured by successful people.

Stephen King’s early failures

Stephen King tackled several rejections and setbacks right from his youth. He worked several odd jobs and poverty was a major issue that drained him for several years. He worked several low-paid jobs before landing a teaching job at a local high school. King worked from a makeshift desk in the laundry room of his double-wide trailer. He was too poor to buy his own typewriter and ended up borrowing one from his wife. His wife was his greatest support system. Stephen reached a state where he was almost on the verge of giving up. He crumpled pages of his writing and threw them into the trash. Later that day, his wife pulled the pages out of the trash and told him to keep going. She motivated him to keep writing.

After putting in his full efforts Stephen King finally completed his first book. Following this, he was in for a lot of rejections. He sent it out to a list of publishers. He received exactly the same response from each of them, a very saddening no. Though he expected it, he was torn down but he didn’t let this pull him back. At one point in time, he started pinning all his rejection slips on a nail in his room until there were too many and he had to replace the nail with a spike. He was rejected 30 times back to back. While any other person could have easily given up, Stephen King believed in himself and kept trying.

Way Toward Success

Every rejection slip stated that his first novel “Carrie” would just not sell. But everything changed one day when a small publishing house decided to publish his book and they were ready to pay him $2,500. Though it was not a lot of money, it surely meant something as his family was on the brink of poverty. When “Carrie” was finally published, it sold over a million copies in its first year. This was the major breakthrough and life changed from there. Despite the several setbacks and failures, Stephen put in his hard work and turned the tables successfully. At a point in time, he suffered from severe addiction to alcohol and other drugs. But got help, became sober and continued to write. The several hurdles and challenges were walked past with persistent hard work.

Life lessons from Stephen King’s life :

Stephen King is a personification of a person who didn’t let failure define him. He never let the rejections and hardships pull him back. He solely believed in himself and achieved success by the simple fact of never giving up. We should never let the fear of failure take over our success. He kept himself motivated and stayed persistent throughout his journey. He learnt from his failure and used these to refine himself. Keep moving forward towards your goal and never give up. Get past your failures to taste the sweet essence of success.

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