I couldn’t see wasting two weeks…creating a novella I didn’t like and wouldn’t be able to sell. So I threw it away.           

The next night, when I came home from school, Tabby had the pages. She’d spied them while emptying my wastebasket, had shaken the cigarette ashes off the crumpled balls of paper, smoothed them out, and sat down to read them. She wanted me to go on with it…”You’ve got something here, she said. “I really think you do.”

 So recounts Stephen King in his book, On Writing: A memoir of the craft. Tabby is his wife and the pages she retrieved from the trash ultimately became Carrie, King’s first successfully published novel. Carrie was a turning point for him and his family. Upon its publication in paperback, he quit teaching and wrote full time.

What if Tabby hadn’t pulled the pages out of the trash?  How might Stephen King’s writing career—life story—be different?

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What about you?  Has there been a “made-all-the-difference” turning point in your life? A time when someone’s actions—no matter how obscure—changed your course:

– from second-guessing yourself to moving forward?

– from being hidden in the background to joining the cast on stage?

– from being on the team to taking the lead?

– from always helping others fulfill their dreams to valuing your own?

 Have you been that difference-maker for someone else?

Have I?

Am I being that person today?

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photo credit: Jeff Hester (creative commons)

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