Sometimes the muse that visits you is an old man.

And my old man is Stephen King.

Since I can think, I always loved reading and writing. Short Stories, fanfictions, anything that came to mind. When I was young, I used to make up a lot of stuff that evolved around the “Star Wars” universe, and wrote it down. Or my stories were set in the “The Tribe” universe (a series I mentioned on here once, if you have kept your eyes open). I’m not saying I was a good writer – god knows there are people out there that are way better than me, and there always will be – but I guess I had a lot of time as a kid.

I wasn’t allowed to watch TV most of the time since I was 13, so I started burying my head into magazines, books, newspapers, everything I could get my grip on. Thank God for that. And one day, I think I was 10 or 11, while I was home alone, I stumbled upon a certain DVD my mother’s husband owned: “IT” by Stephen King. I had heard about it, that it was about a creepy, murderous clown, and since I somehow always had been into Horror Movies alot (I hear the psychiatrists scream in terror about what a disturbed child/teenager I was), I put the movie into the DVD player at 1pm and secretly sat infront of the TV. And what can I say: the movie kind of scared the shit out of me. I say “kind of” because I didn’t switch it off and was afraid to be home alone, or kept the doors locked or even had nightmares about it. First thing I thought during the scene where the little boy, George, gets pulled into the drain by Pennywise was: “Damn, too bad that scene is rated!” Oh yes, I definitely might have been disturbed, thinking that there was not enough blood in that scene. Anyways. That movie impressed me as the first Horror Movie I’ve seen. If you know it, you know how bad it actually is, compared to the book. And there is my transition. I’m a genius.

The book is written by the King of Horror himself, Mr. Stephen King. And from the moment I watched that movie, he kind of was my hero. I immediately tried to get my hands on a lot of his books, which was difficult, considering I never had a lot of money and no one in my family has ever been interested in reading! First book I got of King, I think, was “The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon”, which I got for Christmas a year or two later. It’s a bad book (sorry, Stephen), most of it is boring and you wait for the big, murderous ending. Surprise: there is none. But as soon as I got my hands on that book, I was under Mr. King’s spell. Soon after I had finished it, I spent the little money I had on my first self-bought book of him: “Dreamcatcher”. And that was the moment there was no going back for me from the King of Horror.

Today, when I think back, it’s not even a very challenging book; there is a lot of scatology in it, unnecessarily. But it had a lot of blood and killings in it, and that was the reason I absolutely loved it. Something about King’s writing style completely took hold of me; despite the bad language in it at times, he wrote like some little man next door, like someone who might be living in my neighbourhood. He used an easy language, a language everybody could identify with (that sounds so wrong, but I can’t help it). He didn’t just sugarcoat anything to be liked and get good critics, no. He didn’t give a crap about what anyone might think. He didn’t give up after his first few stories were a flop, when “Carrie” was rejected the first time he had sent it in, back in the ’70’s. He didn’t give up after his horrible accident where he had been run over by a car. He kept going, came back to life, and he still did his thing without a care what others might think about his writing.

And wow, did that impress me. I started writing even more short stories, got my hands on as many books as possible and simply spent every free minute I had on writing or reading. The ideas just flew into my head, and my motivation was on a level that was higher than anything I had ever experienced.

A few years passed, I started my apprenticeship when I turned 18, finally moved out into my own flat, forgot about my own writing skills and instead, my collection of King’s books grew. Among the books I got was also his autobiography “On Writing”. Safe to say barely a book has enchanted me like that one has. I absorbed every little advise about writing books that there was, I read passages over and over again, thinking about them over and over, and slowly began to fully understand the process of writing. Until today, it is the only dog-eared book I own, and to all the pages I keep going back to every now and then. Because that book – among all I had read of him over the past 15 years – was my one true inspiration. I started to get ideas for my own book, for a short story, and I thumbed through his autobiography over and over, because, hands down – I am a damn perfectionist. I wanted to do everything right, like King had “shown” me.

The result of it was a story that was everything else but short:  a thriller, 15 chapters written so far, the end of the book was already in the making a few years back. I had researched quite a few things about a coroner’s work in the US, police investigations, weather informations in the east of the US, etc. I even had found a few internet pages that gave me addresses to sent my story to, for a chance to be published. I wanted to do it right.

Then unfortunate things happened to me. And I stopped writing. I ran out of ideas and motivation. And I don’t think I will ever be able to pick up where I’ve left off; I know that as soon as I’ll start re-reading everything, I will start correcting alot, seeing the flaws in my storyline, realizing that I’m not even close to be a good, successful writer, and eventually throw it away. And although I don’t owe anybody anything with that story, I hate myself for letting myself down like this. I feel like I owe it to Mr. King to try and keep going.

And then, a few days back, I was told by a friend that my blogs on here were amazing, well-written and simply touching. It was like kind of a wake-up call. I suddenly felt the old electric feeling inside my stomach again, that feeling I got when I was about to start writing again. Motivation. Then my best friend who lives about 4,5 hours away from me told me on November, 21st, that my mentor, my inspiration, my one true hero, Mr. Stephen King himself, had been in her hometown for a public reading at their Congress Center. First I was shattered to the core; it was his first time ever in Germany and I knew I’d never get such a chance again to see my idol in person. Then something stirred in me again, and I spontaneously decided to post a part of one of my fanfiction stories on here (if you’re interested, take a look at the post before this one), to see what people think, to see if I was still able to write after all these years. I haven’t heard back from anybody yet, but I know true and honest opinions take time – no one wants half-hearted reactions. And after all, I’m writing for myself, as kind of an escape, not for some attention-whoring, to be noticed or become a star.

I’m still very far away from where I once used to be, and I will take baby steps at writing again. But I feel that a bit of the old fire has started to rise inside of me again. Maybe I will read Mr. King’s autobiography once more. Because I trust him to be my inspiration again. When I was a kid, a teenager, his books, his stories, the things he had to tell to the world, were my escape. They showed me that even the smallest person, the most hurt person is able to reach their goals, if they are willing to put all of their heart into it and don’t care how many times they get rejected or how often bad criticism is trying to get the better of them.

So yes, after drifting far off with this, I can proudly say: Mr. Stephen King is my muse. For others, he might only be a simple writer, an old man. But for me, he is way more.

He’s my hero. And he will always be.