King: Writing Is What God Put Me On Earth To Do

I enjoyed this 1981 PEOPLE magazine article, titled, "For Years, Stephen King's Firestarter Was Wife Tabitha; Now She Burns to Write, Too." (www.people.com)
What's kind of cool about old dated articles is you see how they come out.  Often you read a magazine just a few years old, and the couples have broken up and the love is gone.  But when love endures the story is more interesting.

Here's an interesting quote:

The marriage is built upon a healthy combination of respect and friendly give-and-take. "We have a pact not to argue about drinking, hair and dope," says Tabby, but everything else is fair game.

We know now that Tabby would eventually step in and force King to make some hard decisions.  Consider this: If she had not stepped in, think how messed up he would have been.  So in a way -- all you dark tower freaks -- she saved the Dark Tower.

This article actually sent me searching for my copy of Tabitha King's Small World.  No, I did not find it right away.  No, I have not read it.  But it sounds interesting -- "a fantasy about a mad scientist and his minimizer."

I like this:

Both concede that Small World's sales have been boosted by the fact that Tabby is Steve's wife. "I put 10 years into helping his career," she reasons, "so if his name helps me with mine, I think it's legitimate." 

When the article was written (and I think this is still true) the King's saw writing very differently.

But Tabby says that "writing is only the frosting on my cake. I'm whole without it." For Steve it is different. "If I weren't writing," he admits, "I might be like that guy in the Texas tower. Writing is what God put me on earth to do."

By the way, we know that during the time that this article was written, King was working hard on a book called Cannibals.