Though Stephen King himself denies the influence of a particular childhood occurrence, one has to wonder whether it was the catalyzing event that created the master of horror. As a child, he witnessed a train run over and kill his friend. It was so traumatizing that the young King repressed the event to the point that he still has no memory of it. In Night Shift, he recounts being asked why he always chose to write terrifying stories, to which he responds, "Why do you assume I have a choice?"

As a child in school, King was an avid reader of horror comics and contributed articles to his big brother's self-published newsletter, Dave's Rag. He also began writing stories that he would sell to his friends, until his teacher made him return the money. At 18 years old, he was published by Comics Review with the serial, "I was a Teenage Grave Robber." Two years later, he sold the short story, "The Glass Floor," to Startling Mystery Stories.

It wasn't until 1974, when King was 26 years old, working as a teacher, and married, that his first novel Carrie was accepted by the publisher Doubleday. King's wife Tabitha had found an early draft of it in the trash and encouraged him to finish it. He received a very modest cash advance, but the novel went on to make a killing.

Since then, King's output has been prolific: he has written over 70 books and countless short stories; his work has been adapted into 64 movies, ranging from the 1976 classic Carrie to the 2017 boxoffice smash It. His writing has also inspired over 26 television shows, most recently the 2018 series Castle Rock. In fact, according to his publisher, who believed that readers did not want to read more than one book per year by any author, King was a little too prolific. As a result, King started publishing excess material under the pseudonym Richard Bachman during the 1970s and 80s. But to be honest, most of these books are snore-fests and not worth reading.

According to his website, when Stephen King was asked why he writes, his response was the quintessential one given by many a prolific author: "The answer to that is fairly simple—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."

儘管史蒂芬• 金本人否認有受到童年某一特定事件的影響，但人們不禁要問，是不是有件事催生了這位恐怖大師。他小的時候曾目擊朋友被火車撞死。此事對他造成的創傷之大，使得當年年幼的金壓抑到現在還是沒有這件事的記憶。在《有時候，他們會回來》短篇小說集中，他說到有人問他為什麼總是選擇寫恐怖故事，對此他回答說：「你為什麼認為我有選擇？」

金在校時就是一名狂熱的恐怖漫畫讀者，還會投稿文章到他大哥創辦的小報《戴夫報》。他也開始寫故事拿來賣給朋友，直到他的老師強迫他退錢。18歲時，《漫畫評論》為他出版了《我是一個青年盜墓者》系列。他在兩年後把短篇故事《玻璃地板》賣給了《驚嚇神祕故事》。

一直到1974年，他的第一本小說《魔女嘉莉》才被「雙日」出版社接受，金當時26歲，是一名老師，已婚。金的妻子塔比莎在垃圾桶發現小說的初稿，這才鼓勵他寫完。他收到一筆微薄的預支稿費，但這本小說卻大賣。

此後，金有豐富的作品產出—他寫了70多本書和無數的短篇小說；他的作品被改編成了64部電影，從1976年的經典之作《魔女嘉莉》到2017 年的賣座電影《牠》。他的作品也成為超過26部電視節目的靈感來源，最近的是2018 年的一部影集《城堡岩》。事實上，根據他的出版商的說法，讀者每年並不想閱讀同一個作者一本以上的書，而金有點太多產了。因此，金在1970、80年代時開始用筆名理查• 巴克曼出版多餘的著作。但說真的，那些書大部分都讓人想睡覺，不值得一讀。

根據史蒂芬• 金的官網所述，當他被問到為何而寫時，他給出很多典型多產作家都會給的回應：「答案相當簡單──我生來做不了別的事。我天生就是要寫故事的，我也愛寫故事。這就是我寫作的原因。我真的無法想像去做別的事情，也無法想像不做我現在做的事。」