Originally published on Facebook September 19 2017.
I have never met Stephen King. I have never had any contact with Stephen King. I have had the simultaneous honor and ill-fortune to twice be nominated for genre awards opposite Stephen King: in both cases an exercise in foregone conclusions, but by God there I was and there he was.
I want to say that in the same way writers can change lives even if those lives never directly intersect, the same way that Harlan changed my life a few times before we met, Stephen King unknowingly saved my writing career.
The man from Sherman Oaks unknowingly altered my fate when another well-respected literary giant told me in college that I didn’t have what a writing career takes and that I was fated to never sell a word, and a cold voice appeared in my head with knowledge of Harlan’s own literary biography and told me, “Treasure this exchange, Adam; this is your Dr. Shedd moment.” I walked away from that potentially shattering advice with my resolve still in place, only because I had made the literary acquaintance of a man then many years from becoming my friend and read the story of how one Dr. Shedd told him he was nothing, same context, a college writing class.
In the same way *that* happened, Stephen King also unknowingly stepped in and changed my future, without doing a damn thing but providing an example.
You see, at age 18 or so, I wrote a totally hopeless short story now lost that the world is better off without, and asked a friend for her opinion.
Her opinion was, “This is terrible. This is even worse than Stephen King.”
I said, “Who?”
She said, “Stephen King. I just read a short story collection of his. NIGHT SHIFT. One of the worst books I’ve ever read. Your stuff reminds me of his. You’re just as bad as he is.”
I had not heard of the guy, in 1978. Maybe in passing. I had certainly never read his work.
I went to the library the next day, eschewing my classes because this was *important,* sat down in a comfortable chair and started to read NIGHT SHIFT.
As per my usual wont with short story collections, I skipped around — and because the introduction by John D. MacDonald (a name I did know) singled it out for special praise, I started with “The Last Rung On The Ladder.”
Guys, my friend spoke true. I was worse than Stephen King. Literally true. He was publishing. I was nowhere near ready.
I still am worse than Stephen King, I think, in the sense that I am clearly not as good as him. It would be foolish of me to pretend otherwise.
But blown away by that story, and by several others in that collection, I realized that my critical friend had unknowingly given me one of the great formative compliments of my life. I had a lot to learn, still. I still do. But if what she read and hated from me reminded her at all of this other guy she had read and hated, then maybe that was a sign that the basic trick was not beyond my reach — just not meant for her.
So yeah, the two most encouraging moments I ever had, a full decade before my first acceptance letter, were both by naysayers who tried to destroy me — and in both cases, writers I loved unknowingly shielded me from the shrapnel.
I owe King that debt, and he probably doesn’t even know who the hell I am.
Writers do that.
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