King begins the “Notes” section by stating that “The Mist” was written in the summer of 1976, as his agent at the time, Kirby McCauley, was compiling his stories together for “Dark Forces.” At the time, King couldn’t “think of a thing,” and no amount of wrestling with ideas led to meaningful inspiration, as if “the short-story machine in [his] head was temporarily or permanently broken.” When a thunderstorm broke out one day, King decided to go grocery shopping, which is exactly when his short-story muse struck him with inspiration:
“I was halfway down the middle aisle, looking for hot-dog buns, when I imagined a big prehistoric bird flapping its way toward the meat counter at the back, knocking over cans of pineapple chunks and bottles of tomato sauce. By the time my son Joe and I were in the checkout lane, I was amusing myself with a story about all these people trapped in a supermarket surrounded by prehistoric animals.”
King was initially amused by this idea but decided to give it a go, and he ended up writing a chunk of “The Mist” the same night and finished it within the week. He explained that he wasn’t a fan of the story until the rewrite, where he was able to “discover a rhythm of language that [he] liked” and modify certain aspects of the story’s main character, David Drayton, to ensure readers would actively root for him in the end.
King’s grocery store trip might have inspired a somewhat silly idea about beasts hounding local townsfolk, yet the author ultimately transformed “The Mist” into an unforgettable tale about repressed societal angst, the sudden loss of safety, and the terrors accompanying such intense feelings.