King earned his teaching certificate shortly after graduating from the University of Maine in 1970, but couldn't find a job by the time school started that fall.
Instead, he worked at an industrial laundry facility in Maine, supplementing his income with his college girlfriend's student loans and the occasional sale of a short story to a men's magazine.
One of those short stories, "Graveyard Shift," was made into a movie of the same name 20 years later.
The following year, King and his girlfriend, Tabitha Spruce, were married, and King started working as a high school English teacher at the Hampden Academy in Maine. The job paid $6,400 a year.
King quit after two years, when the paperback sale of "Carrie" allowed him to write full-time.