After graduation, King had aspirations to be a writer. So he headed north to the University of Maine Orono to earn a degree in English Literature. While in college, King was a columnist for the college paper, was outspoken against the Vietnam War, and worked in the college library. That same library is now home to many of King's papers. It's also where he met his wife. Tabitha was looking for a book in the stacks, King passed by and struck up a conversation with her, and four years later the literary couple had graduated, had a daughter and was married.

Though King had been writing in college, he was far from being able to support himself and a growing family just by writing. He, Tabitha, and their daughter Naomi were living in a trailer outside of Bangor, and King was working two jobs. He was teaching English at Hampden Academy, and in the summers was pumping gas at the local station while also working shifts at a laundromat. Tabitha took on shifts at a Dunkin' Donuts, and they struggled to get by.

But King always made time to write. Even in the cramped quarters of the family's trailer, he made a point to set aside space for a writing desk and typewriter. 2,000 words a day was his goal, and that's a goal he stands by today. Eventually, King earned a teaching certificate and was able to put his college education to use as a teacher at Hampden Academy.

The work still wasn't what he wanted to be doing, though. It was writing he loved, and writing that he wanted to earn a living from. Writing has always been his purpose in life, as he explains, "There was nothing else I was made to do. I was made to write stories and I love to write stories. That's why I do it. I really can't imagine doing anything else and I can't imagine not doing what I do."

Though it took years of effort, his big break did come. After Tabitha fished the beginning of Carrie out of the trash in 1973, King finished the book and sent it off to a publisher. He wasn't confident about its chances of being published: "...my considered opinion was that I had written the world's all-time loser." The family wasn't doing well financially when he sent Carrie in, and they couldn't even afford a phone. So he got the news via telegram ... he'd be receiving a 2500 dollar advance and Doubleday would be publishing Carrie. Then ... even better news came. The paperback rights were sold for 400,000 dollars. King could quit teaching and write full-time, and his family would be better off than they had ever dared to imagine. The book was a smash hit. Within the next year, a million copies were sold and only three years later it was made into an Academy Award winning movie.

He knew he had a problem, but he didn't stop drinking. In fact, he took it one step further. In the late 70s, King started doing cocaine, using it at night while he was writing. By this time, he and Tabitha had three kids and he knew his addictions were taking a toll both on his family and his writing. He attributes the length of Tommyknockers to cocaine, and looking back has said the book could have been half the length if so much of it hadn't been inspired purely by his drugged-up energy. He's also said he doesn't even remember writing Cujo, so bad was his consumption of alcohol and drugs during the 80s. He said: "There's one novel, Cujo, that I barely remember writing at all. I don't say that with pride or shame, only with a vague sense of sorrow and loss. I like that book. I wish I could remember enjoying the good parts as I put them down on the page." And, The Shining and Misery both carry an undercurrent of reference to his struggles - Jack Torrence is an alcoholic in The Shining, and King has described the antagonist of Misery as essentially the personification of cocaine.

It wasn't until the late 80s, when Tabitha threatened to leave him and the family staged a dramatic intervention that King cleaned up his act. At the intervention, his family displayed drug paraphernalia and pills they had collected from the trash. King, with the magnitude of his problem laid out in front of his eyes and in front of family and friends, made the decision to get sober. Now, he's been sober for nearly three decades. During the 1990s and into the 21st century, King continued to be one of the world's most prolific and well-known writers. His books spawned movies and mini-series, and over 350 million copies of his books have been sold.

After he became so popular, King took the step of publishing under a pseudonym - Richard Bachman. He wanted to see if he could still get books published and have them sell without his now-famous name splashed across the front. Turns out, he could. The first book he published under the name Richard Bachman was "Rage." Set in King's familiar world of a Maine high school, the book tells the story of a teenager who engages in violent acts at his school. He sets his locker on fire, shoots his algebra teacher, and attacks another student with a wrench.

In 1977, it was a figment of King's imagination. But in the late 1980s and 1990s, the book unfortunately started to resemble actual occurrences at schools across the United States. In 1997, after a student shot eight people at a prayer meeting in Kentucky, it was discovered that he had a copy of Rage in his locker. Disturbed by this, King asked his publisher to take the book out of print. To this day, Rage remains out of print.