Inspiration
Stephen King's inspiration for "The Reach" came about from the story his brother-in-law, Tommy, told him while in the Coast Guard. The real-life alter-ego of Stella Flanders lived and died on a small Maine Island, never stepping foot on the mainland. She remained on a small stretch of land with a community so close, they were more like family. She had everything she needed on this island and had no need to cross the Reach until the day she died. Being intrigued by the idea of the Reach, and flabbergasted with Flanders' counterpart, King came up with the idea for this short story.
"The Reach" was the original title, but King changed it to "Do the Dead Sing?" when it was published in Yankee. When it was published in Skeleton Crew, King changed it back to the original title.
Read more about this topic: The Reach
Famous quotes containing the word inspiration:
“What is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the study. The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and heart of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Shakespeare carries us to such a lofty strain of intelligent activity, as to suggest a wealth which beggars his own; and we then feel that the splendid works which he has created, and which in other hours we extol as a sort of self-existent poetry, take no stronger hold of real nature than the shadow of a passing traveller on the rock. The inspiration which uttered itself in Hamlet and Lear could utter things as good from day to day, for ever.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)