Me and Stephen King

I listen to King read his book "On Writing" at least once a year. I listen to it because the sound of his voice...well...makes the sound of his writing voice even stronger.

Seeing him and "hearing" him yesterday inspired me to get out the cassettes (that's how long I've had it - before I had a car with a CD player). I started listening today. Once again I'm amazed by the similarities in our lives - at least up to a point.

Here are the things we had in common as kids:
Born in 1947
Lower middle class families (but I had a father)
Many painful visits to an "odiologist" (King's word as a child) in the early to mid-1950s to have eustascian tubes drained because of multiple ear infections - and each time each odiologist told both of us it wouldn't hurt (they lied)
Loved to read and sometimes...well...always read outside age group and topics (like pulp fiction/adult books/horror)
Wrote on a Royal portable typewriters that were Christmas presents.
Submitted our first short stories and received our first rejection letters at the age of 12
Loved horror movies - especially the "Poe movies" that were nothing like Poe's books. Those were the only horror movies I was allowed to watch because my parents thought they really were about the books. Goddess bless Susie Spence who would relate the plot to all the other Grade B horror flicks I couldn't see (at least not until I was 18).

I may have missed one or two things and will probably hear them in the coming days as I listen to King tell his story.

Of course this doesn't mean that someone with these similarities could be a writer or a writer near King's level of literary expertise. It doesn't mean that I ever will be - or I ever would have been.

But the huge difference is really, really a huge one. King went to college and I went to nursing school. His writing talent was encouraged just from being in college - one must write and write and write to graduate.

Nursing school was, of course, completely different. Yep - I do have an issue with not going to college - will carry that issue with me forever but that's another blog.

Would I be a published author today - a multi-published author - if I had gone to college? I really think I would be. Would I be of King's caliber - maybe not. But I would have had the chance earlier in my life.

Now I'm taking every chance. One day there book will be on a shelf at Barnes & Noble with Mitzi Flyte on the spine.

I will have one last thing in common with King.