Even a writer as prolific and celebrated as King's first novel, Carrie, was published in 1974 and it became an instant hit, putting King on the map and ushering in one of the most influential writers of not just that era, but of any era.

Stephen King has continued to churn out one to two books a year just about every year since, meaning he's been writing and at the top of his game for more than half a century. Of course, he's also had some whiffs. Over the years, Stephen King has been open about adaptations of his books he's hated. But to his credit and in the interest of fairness, he's also been equally open about his own work he's not been happy with over the years.

5 The Tommyknockers

Published 1987

Of all his books he's most unhappy with, Stephen King the most open about hating The Tommyknockers, which deserves a revision. King published the book in 1987, and while it was a bestseller that year, as was every Stephen King book by that time, both King and his fans agree it wasn't his best effort. It's not that there weren't the seeds of good ideas in the novel, but it's generally agreed that The Tommyknockers was too meandering and self-indulgent, without the cohesion it needed to be truly great. King trashed the novel in a 2014 interview with Rolling Stone, saying

"The Tommyknockers is an awful book. That was the last one I wrote before I cleaned up my act. And I've thought about it a lot lately and said to myself, 'There's really a good book in here, underneath all the sort of spurious energy that cocaine provides, and I ought to go back.' The book is about 700 pages long, and I'm thinking, 'There's probably a good 350-page novel in there.'"

4 Dreamcatcher

Published 2001

The Tommyknockers wasn't the only one of his books to catch flak from the author in the 2014 Rolling Stone interview. His 2001 book, Dreamcatcher, is also one he looks back on and only sees flaws and messy writing, and for the same reason: the impact of drugs on this work. This time, however, it wasn't because he was using them illicitly, like his infamous cocaine habit in his early years, but because he was at the mercy of painkillers after the 1999 accident that almost killed him. As he explained, he was in a lot of pain at that time. The adjustments needed to work around it, as well as the painkillers he was on, compromised his writing:

"I don’t like Dreamcatcher very much. Dreamcatcher was written after the accident. I was using a lot of Oxycontin for pain. And I couldn’t work on a computer back then because it hurt too much to sit in that position. So I wrote the whole thing longhand. And I was pretty stoned when I wrote it, because of the Oxy, and that’s another book that shows the drugs at work.”

3 Rose Madder

Published 1995

King also wasn't too fond of some of his mid-'90s books, an era in which he got a bit too outside his comfort zone and tried to be what too many think of as a "real" writer, that is, he actually sat down and outlined his books. King has often said that he doesn't do any hard plotting of his books nor does he outline. As he described it in a Wall Street Journal interview in 2021, it's just not his style. "The thing is, I don’t outline, I don’t have whole plots in my head in advance," he said. "So I’m really happy if I know what’s going to happen tomorrow, which I do, as a matter of fact, I know what’s going to happen in the novel I’m working on. And that’s enough."

Ever the experimenter, he tried to change that in the '90s, to varying success. While his books of that era were all relatively well-received and bestsellers, he just wasn't happy with the finished product, feeling that they didn't sound like him. Perhaps he's the only one who can see the seams because he felt he wasn't being true to his process as he was writing them. But the books of that era are ones he's not happy with, as he explained in his 2000 memoir On Writing:

"As I told you, I have written plotted novels, but the results, in books like Insomnia and Rose Madder, have not been particularly inspiring. They are (much as I hate to it it) stiff, trying-too-hard novels. The only plot-driven novel of mine which I really like is The Dead Zone (and in all fairness, I must say I like that one a great deal)."

2 Insomnia

Published 1994

As mentioned above, 1994's Insomnia, which was a stealth Dark Tower tie-in book, was also a victim of that plotting-out approach of the mid-'90s. As his books got longer and more complex and layered – and he was no longer under the influence of drugs – he realized that he might need to try outlining his stories to keep track of the narrative and avoid continuity issues. But, as he said, the results felt too formulaic, and so he eventually went back to his natural approach of letting the ideas flow as they came to him. As he said at another point in On Writing

"I distrust plot for two reasons: first, because our lives are largely plotless, even when you add in all our reasonable precautions and careful planning; and second, because I believe plotting and the spontaneity of real creation aren't compatible. It's best that I be as clear about this as I can – I want you to understand that my basic belief about the making of stories is that they pretty much make themselves. The job of the writer is to give them a place to grow (and to transcribe them, of course)."

1 Rage

Published 1977

Of the books he isn't happy with, his book Rage, one of his Richard Bachman books, isn't one that King dislikes because he thinks it's poorly written. Instead, he dislikes it because of its subject matter and the impact he's allegedly had on mass shooters. Rage tells the story of the troubled and violent high school senior Charlie, who kills a few teachers and holds his fellow students hostage after being suspended. Published in 1977, Rage is a disturbingly prescient story detailing the horrors that too many unstable school shooters have unleashed in reality in the past few decades.

Unfortunately, Rage was also found in the possession or named as an inspiration for a handful of school shooters. Though he only knew of two at the time, King requested his publishers to pull Rage from bookshelves and he has banned it from being reprinted, and as such, King's Rage is now out of print. He explained his reasoning in his 2013 essay, Guns:

"That was enough for me, even though at the time, the Loukaitis and Carneal shootings were the only Rage-related ones of which I was aware. I asked my publishers to pull the novel from publication, which they did, although it wasn't easy. By then it was part of an omnibus containing all four Bachman books. (In addition to Rage, there was The Long Walk, The Running Man, and Roadwork – another novel about a shooter with psychological problems.) The Bachman collection is still available but you won't find Rage in it.

My book did not break Cox, Pierce, Carneal, or Loukaitis, or turn them into killers; they found something in my book that spoke to them because they were already broken. Yet I did see Rage as a possible accelerant, which is why I pulled it from sale. You don't leave a can of gasoline where a boy with firebug tendencies can lay hands on it."

Even though he's written almost 70 books and countless short stories, it's nice to know that even an author as prolific and famous as Stephen King still has works he's not satisfied with.

Sources: Rolling Stone, Wall Street Journal, On Writing, "Guns"