The next year, at 16, he quit school to focus on comedy full time. They moved into a VW van on a relative’s lawn, and the young aspiring comedian-who was so dedicated to his craft that he mailed his resume to The Carroll Burnett Show just a few years earlier, at age 10-took an eight-hours-per-day factory job after school to help make ends meet.Īt age 15, Carrey performed his comedy routine onstage for the first time-in a suit his mom made him-and totally bombed, but he was undeterred. When Carrey was 14 years old, his father lost his job, and his family hit rough times. Success achieved! Photo courtesy of Featureflash /. Soon after, though, Signet Books signed on for the paperback rights for $400,000, $200,000 of which went to King. After dozens of rejections, he finally sold it for a meager advance to Doubleday Publishing, where the hardback sold only 13,000 copies-not great. Even his now best-selling book, Carrie, wasn’t a hit at first. I replaced the nail with a spike and kept on writing.” He received 60 rejections before selling his first short story, "The Glass Floor," for $35.
In his book On Writing, he recalls: “By the time I was 14.the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. King received so many rejection letters for his works that he developed a system for collecting them. They were so poor they had to borrow clothes for their wedding and had gotten rid of the telephone because it was too expensive.
He lived in a trailer with his wife-also a writer-and they both worked multiple jobs to support their family while pursuing their craft. King was broke and struggling when he was first trying to write.
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