You‘re not guaranteed that you will be able to feed yourself if you go down that path, and so I would have never considered it. I was — I still am — a very practical person.
SH: So you really had to go into it from the side… by fooling yourself that you‘re not actually writing a book.
SM: I think there was this subconscious thing going on that was protecting me from thinking of the story in a way that would keep me from being able to finish it.
I always needed that extra fantasy world. I had to have another world I could be in at the same time.
SH: Right. But, of course, you were a reader. You‘ve been an avid reader for your whole life.
SM: That was always my favorite thing, until I found writing. My kids and my husband used to tease me, because my hand would kind of naturally form this sort of bookholder [SH laughs], this claw for holding books. Because I had the baby in one arm and the book in the other — with the bottle tucked under my chin and the phone on my shoulder. [Laughs] You know, the Octopus Mom. But I always had a book.
I always needed that extra fantasy world. I had to have another world I could be in at the same time. And so, with writing, I just found a way to have another world, and then to be able to be a lot more a part of it than as a reader.
SH: I think it‘s part of multitasking. I wonder if most writers — I know moms have to be this way, but most writers, too — have to have two things going on at once just to stay entertained.
SM: Exactly. [Laughs]
SH: It‘s not that I‘m unsatisfied, because I love my life. I‘m a mom, too, of small kids—
and I love my husband — but I also need something else beyond that. I need another story to take me away.
SM: You know, it‘s funny. As I‘ve become a writer, I started looking at other writers and how they do things, and everybody‘s very different. I read Atonement recently, and I was interested in the way Ian McEwan writes about being a writer through the character‘s standpoint…. She‘s always seeing another story. She‘s doing one thing — but, then, in her head, it becomes something else, and it turns into another story.
It‘s kind of like what you were saying about writers needing that extra reality to escape to. I think that writers maybe do have just that need for more than one reality. [Laughs]
SH: You know, we‘re not really sure if it‘s insanity or it‘s a superpower.
SM: But it‘s an insanity that doesn‘t hurt anybody.
SH: Right. It‘s kind of friendly, cozy, fuzzy insanity.
On The Writing Process
SH: I think you must write much better first drafts than I do.
SM: I doubt that.
SH: Really? Are they pretty bad?
SM: I think so. I have to go over them again and again, because I don‘t always flesh it out enough. I write it through so quickly that I have to go back and add things. I tend to use the same words a lot, and I have to consciously go back and take out things like that. And I don‘t always get them. My first drafts are scary.
And I cannot read a page of anything I‘ve written without making five changes — that‘s my average.
SH: How do you go about rewriting? With Twilight, did you send it off immediately, or did you go back and start revising it?
SM: I probably read it, I don‘t know, fifty to a hundred times before I sent it anywhere.
And I cannot read a page of anything I‘ve written without making five changes — that‘s my average. So even now that Twilight is ―finished‖—quote-unquote — oh, I‘d love to revise it. I could do such a better job now. And I have a hard time rereading it. Because if I read it on the computer, I want to go in and change things — and it drives me crazy that I can‘t.
SH: Yeah. I try not to read anything that I‘ve already published.
SM: If I read it in the book form, I can usually relax and kind of enjoy it. I like to experience the stories again, because I see it like I did the first time I saw it. But sometimes it‘s hard not to be like, ―Oh, I hate that now. Why did I do it that way?‖ [Laughs]
SH: That would be writers‘ hell: You‘re continually faced with a manuscript that you wrote years ago and not allowed to change it.
SM: [Laughs] Well, then, that‘s every writer‘s reality, right? [Laughs]
SH: I don‘t know if you feel this way, but once a book is written and out of my hands and out there, I no longer feel like I wrote it. I don‘t feel like I can even claim the story anymore. I feel like now it belongs out there, with the readers.
SM: I feel that way about the hardbound copy on the shelf. There is a disassociation there. If I look at it on a shelf, and it seems very distant and cold and important, I don‘t feel like it‘s something that belongs to me. When I read it, it does.
SH: I guess I haven‘t reread my books. I listen to the audiobooks, actually — one time for each book — and I have enjoyed that. The people who did my audiobooks are a full cast, so it‘s like this play, almost.
SM: Oh, that‘s so cool.
SH: They say things differently than I would have, but instead of being wigged out by it, I actually like it. Because it‘s as though I‘m hearing a new story, and I‘m hearing it for the first time.
SM: See, I can‘t ignore my mistakes as much when I hear it on audio. I have tried to listen to my books on audio, and I cannot do it. Because I hear the awkwardness in a phrase when it‘s spoken aloud, and I just think: Oh, gosh! I shouldn"t have phrased it that way. And there‘ll be other things where I hear the mistakes a lot louder than when I read through it and kind of skip over them with my eyes.
That was one of my favorite parts — reading it.
SH: Now, by the time you finished Twilight, you thought, This is a book—and then you started to revise. Did you revise just to, like you said, relive the story? Or did you have a purpose?
SM: Well, while I was writing I would revise while I was going. I‘d start and go back and read what I‘d written up to that point before I started. And some days I‘d spend the whole day just making changes and adding things to what I‘d written. That was one of my favorite parts — reading it. That surprised me, you know…. But then it‘s the book that‘s perfect for you, because you wrote it for yourself, and so it‘s everything that you want it to be.
And when I put the ―golden spike‖ into it, I looked at it and felt… kind of shocked that I‘d finished it. And then I thought maybe there was a reason I‘d done all this, that I was supposed to go forward with this. Maybe there was some greater purpose, and I was supposed to do something with it. Because it was such an odd thing for me, to write a book over the summer; it was so odd for me to feel so compelled about it.
The one person who knew what I was doing was my big sister Emily. But my sister‘s so: Everything"s wonderful! Everything"s perfect! You shouldn"t change a single word! [SH laughs]
She‘s so supportive; I knew that it was not a big risk to let her see it. So it was the combination of thinking, I finished this! and Emily saying, ―Well, you have to try and publish it. You have to do it.‖ I don‘t know how many times we talked when she‘d say, ―Stephenie, have you sent anything out yet?‖
So then I revised with a purpose. And I revised with a sense of total embarrassment: Oh my gosh. If anyone ever sees this I"ll be so humiliated. I can"t do it. And then Emily would call again, and again I‘d feel this sense like: Maybe I"m supposed to. Then I started doing all the research, you know… like looking for an agent. I didn‘t know that writers had agents. I thought only athletes and movie stars did that.
So that was intimidating and off-putting: I need an agent? This sounds complicated. Then I had to find out how to write literary queries. And summing up my story in ten sentences was the most painful thing for me.
SH: Horrible.
SM: It does not work well. [Laughs] And it was also pretty painful having to put out this letter that says: ―Hi, this is who I am; this is what I‘ve written; this is what it‘s about. I have absolutely no experience, or any rea
son why I think that you should actually pick this up, because who am I? Thank you very much, Stephenie Meyer.‖ [Laughs] That was hard.
And sending them out — I don‘t want to remember that often. Because you know how you kind of blank out things that are unpleasant — like childbirth and stuff? It was such a hard thing to do. Back in the neighborhood where I lived at the time, you couldn‘t put mail in your mailbox—
kids stole it — so you had to drive out and go put it in a real mailbox. And to this day I can‘t even go by that corner without reliving the nauseating terror that was in my stomach when I mailed those queries.
SH: Wow.
SM: See, I didn‘t take creative-writing classes like you. I didn‘t take the classes because I knew someone was going to read what I would write. I didn‘t worry about the writing part — it was letting someone else read it. My whole life that was a huge terror of mine: having someone know what goes on inside my head.
With every book, I always see the part that I think people are going to get mad about, or the part that‘s going to get mocked.
SH: So how have you? Because, obviously, millions of people now have read what you wrote. Is it still terrifying for you, every time you put a book out?
SM: Yeah… and with good reason. Because the world has changed — and the way books are received is different now. People are very vocal. And I do not have a lot of calluses on my creative soul — every blow feels like the first one. I have not learned how to take that lightly or let it roll off of me. I know it‘s something I need to learn before I go mad — but it‘s not something that I‘ve perfected. And so it‘s hard, even when you know it‘s coming. You don‘t know where it‘s coming from — a lot of them are sucker punches.
With every book, I always see the part that I think people are going to get mad about, or the part that‘s going to get mocked. With Twilight, I thought: Oh gosh. People are just going to rip me apart for this — if anybody picks it up. Which they"re not going to, because they"re going to read the back and say: A book about vampires? Oh, come on — it"s been so done. So I knew it was coming.
But there were always some things I wasn‘t expecting that people wouldn‘t like. I mean, with everything you put out, you just have to know: There are going to be people who really like it, and that‘s going to feel really good. But there are going to be people who really dislike things that are very personal to me, and I‘m just going to have to take it.
SH: But it‘s so terrifying. I don‘t know how you even have the courage to do it every time. The book of mine that I thought was going to be my simplest, happiest book, just a sweet little fun book that people would enjoy — that was the one that got slammed the hardest. Like you said, it was things I never could have anticipated that people didn‘t like.
As I look back on it, I think if I had a chance, I would take those parts out, or change those things that people hated. But I didn‘t know at the time. And so now, as I‘m writing another book — I know there are things that people are going to hate. But I don‘t know what they are.
[SM laughs] If I only knew what they were, I would be sorely tempted to change them to try and please everyone! I do the very best I can, but you can never anticipate what it is that people are going to react to.
SM: See, I have a very different reaction to that, because I can"t change it — it is the way it is. I mean, there are things I can do in editing — and I can polish the writing. I know I can always do better with that. And I know that, even in the final form, if I could have another three months to work on it, I would never stop polishing, because I can always make every word more important.
But I just can‘t change what happens, because that‘s the way it is. That‘s the story: Who the people are dictates what happens to them. I mean, there are outside forces that can come in, but how the characters respond to them eventually determines where they‘re going to be. Once you know who they are, there‘s no way to change what their future is — it just is what it is.
And so my reaction, when the criticism is really bad and really hard, is: I wish I would have kept this in my computer. I should have just held on to this work and have it be mine alone.
Because sometimes I wonder: Is it worth it to share it? But then you feel like you‘re not doing your characters a service with that — they deserve to live more fully, in someone else‘s mind.
Yes, I know I sound crazy! [Laughs]
SH: No. I totally, totally understand that. I remember hearing writers talk about how their characters are almost alive, and almost have a will of their own. And I thought they were kinda full of crap [SM laughs] but there is something to it. I think that it‘s a balance, though. There‘s the idea of these characters that are alive in my mind, and then there‘s me, the author. And I have some power to control the story, and to try and make it a strong story — but, then, the characters also have some power to say no.
SM: Yeah.
You can‘t change who they are to make the story go easier.
SH: For me, writing is finding a balance between that sort of transcendental story and my own power of writing — not letting myself overwrite them too much, and not letting them overrun me.
SM: Yeah. See, I find that difficult — because, to me, you create a character, and you define them, and you make them who they are. And you get them into a shape where they are final. Their story isn‘t, but they are who they are — and they do feel very real. You can‘t change who they are to make the story go easier.
So sometimes things happen in the story because my character, being who he is, can‘t do anything different. I‘ve written him so tightly into who he is that I cannot change his course of action now, without feeling like: Well, that"s not in character — that"s not what he would do.
There"s only one course now. And sometimes it‘s hard, when the course goes a way that‘s difficult to write.
On Characters Coming To Life
SH: So how much did you know about Jacob and his future when you were writing Twilight?
SM: Jacob was an afterthought. He wasn‘t supposed to exist in the original story. When I wrote the second half of Twilight first, there was no Jacob character. He started to exist about the point where I kind of hit a bit of a wall: I could not make Edward say the words I"m a vampire.
There was no way that was ever coming out of his mouth — he couldn‘t do it. And that goes back to what we were talking about with characters. You know, he had been keeping the truth about himself secret for so long, and it was something he was so… unhappy about, and devastated about. He would never have been able to tell her.
And so I thought: How is Bella ever going to figure this out? But I had picked Forks already as the story‘s location, and so then I thought: You know, these people have been around for a while, and they"ve been in this area before. Have they left tracks — footprints — somewhere, that she can discover an older story to give her insight?
That‘s when I discovered that there was a little reservation of Quileute Indians on the coastline. I was interested in them before I even knew I was going to work them into the story. I thought: Oh, that"s interesting. There"s a real dense and different kind of history there. I‘ve always kind of been fascinated with Native American history, and this was a story I‘d never heard before.
This is a very small tribe, and it‘s really not very well known, and their language is different from anyone else‘s. And they have these great legends — even one that‘s similar to the Noah‘s Ark story; the Quileutes tied their canoes to the tops of the tallest trees so they weren‘t swept away by the big flood — that I thought were really interesting.
And they have the wolf legend. The story goes that they descended from wolves — a magician changed the first Quileute from a wolf into a man, that‘s how they began — and when I was reading the legend I thought: You know, that"s kind of funny. Because I know werewolf people and vampires don‘t get along at all. And how funny is it that there‘s that story, right here next to where I
set my vampire story.
SH: That‘s so cool, that kind of serendipity that happens in storytelling.
SM: It felt like, Now it‘s on! Now I know how it has to be! What kismet to happen. And so Jacob was born — as a device, really — to tell Bella what she needed to know. And, yet, as soon as I gave him life, and gave him a chance to open his mouth, I just found him so endearing. He took on this personality that was just so funny and easy. And you love the characters you don‘t have to work for.
And Jacob was not an ounce of work. He just came to life and was exactly what I needed him to be, and I just enjoyed him as a person. But his appearance in chapter 6 was really it — that was all he was in the story. And then my agent loved this Jacob, and she‘s never gotten over that.
She was one hundred percent Team Jacob all the time.
What a world it would be if we knew that all these little legends around us are absolutely real!
SH: [Laughs] And, you know, I am, too. I love Jacob.
The Twilight Saga: The Official Illustrated Guide (twilight) Page 2