On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

A year or so later, King moves with his mother, Nellie, and brother, David, to West De Pere, Wisconsin to be near his aunt. He recalls a string of baby sitters, one in particular named Eula or Beulah. She has a dangerous sense of humor. King notes, “She would hug me, tickle me, get me laughing, and then, still laughing, go upside my head hard enough to knock me down” (20). On one occasion, King repeatedly asks for fried eggs, and she cooks him a total of seven. He throws up, and Eula-Beulah locks him in a closet, where he throws up again on his mother’s shoes. She is fired after this experience.

The family’s stay in De Pere “was neither long nor successful” (22). They are evicted from their apartment after a neighbor reports David crawling on the roof. David is now “fifty-five and living in New Hampshire” (22). 

When King is 5 or 6, his mother narrates the story of the girl who drowned in Prout’s Neck, New Hampshire. A 14-year-old Nellie hears the girl screaming after she swims past the rip, but no one can rescue her. Her body washes up on the beach. Later, Nellie tells King about when she saw a sailor jump from the roof a hotel, and “he splattered” in the street (23).

King notes, “most of the nine months I should have spent in the first grade I spent in bed” (23). He comes down with a case of measles that worsens into strep throat. Nellie takes him to an ear specialist, who lances King’s eardrum with a needle to drain the puss. King notes, “the pain was beyond anything I have ever felt since,” even though the doctor tells him it won’t hurt (24). King has to go back to the doctor twice more for the same procedure.

A month or two after visiting the ear specialist, King goes to the throat doctor. The nurse swabs his throat, and, “after the ear doctor’s long needle it was a walk in the park” (26). King’s tonsils must be taken out, and he recalls being wheeled under the bright lights of the operating room. Though he is promised all the ice cream he can eat, he doesn’t want any after the operation.

After his medical procedures, King is removed from school entirely for the rest of first grade. He will start the year again in the following fall. Once out of school, King is “either in bed or housebound” (27). He reads a great deal, “approximately six tons of comic books” (27). He begins to create hybrid texts by copying down Combat Casey comics into a Blue Horse tablet and adding in his own descriptions. After showing his creations to his mother, she encourages him to write his own material.

Nellie’s suggestion to write his own stories fills King with “an immense feeling of possibility” (28). He goes on to write an original four-page story about magic animals led by Mr. Rabbit Trick. Nellie gives him positive feedback and encourages him to write more. King writes four more stories, and Nellie pays him a quarter for each of them, sending them to her four sisters.