“Carrie” started out to be one of those. After six or eight pages, I found myself in a high-school locker room with a bunch of screaming girls who were all throwing sanitary napkins and screaming “Plug it up!” at a poor, lost girl named Carrie White who had never heard of menstruation and thought she was bleeding to death.
Appalled by the realistic quality of the scene and adrift in a world of girls–a world I barely understood–I threw the pages away. My wife rescued them that night while emptying the wastebasket; just saw the crumpled pages and got curious about what I’d been writing, I guess. She told me it was good, and that I should go on. I told her it was too long for the markets I’d been selling to; that it might turn out to be a short novel, even. She said, “Then write it.” I protested that I knew almost nothing about girls. She said, “I do. I’ll help you.” She did, and for the last 28 years, she has.
I sold the book to Doubleday for $2,500. They thought it [might be a sleeper like] “The Parallax View,” a novel they had published a year or two previous. The book’s reception floored everyone, I think, except my wife. Looking back on it, I’d have to say that Carrie White was the original riot grrrl.
