The Twilight Saga: The Official Illustrated Guide (6 page)

SH:
I have a book like that—
Enna Burning
—which has been my least popular book all around. But there is a core of people for whom that is their favorite. And it is tremendously gratifying, because that was a difficult book to write for me, too. It’s a dark book, and I poured so much into it. I’m really proud of that book. But to find that it spoke to someone else besides me makes me feel not quite so lonely as a writer.

SM:
As a writer I don’t think you always realize how lonely it is to feel like you’re in this world all by yourself. That’s why you end up sharing it, because there are some people who will get it.

SM:
What surprises me is not that there are people who don’t get my book—because that seems really obvious and natural—but that there are people who
do
. And I do think that, as the series went on, the story started to get more specific, and possibilities were getting cut out. As you define something, all the “might have beens” die as you decide things. And so I’m not surprised that people had problems with wrapping it up, because it became more specific to me as time went on.

Every book has its audience. Sometimes it’s an audience of one person—sometimes it’s an audience of twenty. And every book has someone who loves it, and some people who don’t. Every one of those books in a bookstore has a reason to be there—some person that it’s going to touch. But you can’t expect it to get everybody.

SH:
No.

SM:
And you can’t say: “Well, there’s something wrong if this book didn’t mean the same thing to everyone who read it.” The book
shouldn’t
make sense to some people, because we’re all different. And thank goodness. How boring would it be if we all felt the same way about every book?

SH:
I really believe that, as writers, we do fifty percent of the work—and then the reader does the other fifty percent of the work—of storytelling. We’re all bringing experiences and understanding to a book.

When you start with
Twilight
, you’ve got one book and one story. There’s still an infinite number of possibilities of where that story can go. So if you’ve got, maybe, ten million fans of
Twilight
, by the time you get to
New Moon
, you’re
narrowing what can happen, because these characters are making choices, and so maybe you’ve got seven million possibilities. By the time you get to
Eclipse
, you’re down to, say, three million people who are going to be happy with the story. After
Breaking Dawn
…

SM:
There are only twenty people who are going to get it. [Laughs] I think it’s a weird expectation that if a story is told really well, everybody, therefore, will have to appreciate it. People bring so many of their own expectations to the table that a story can’t really please everyone.

SH:
But is it still hard for you? Do you still have a desire to please everyone?

SM:
Of course. I would love to make people happy. It’s a great thing to hear that your book made someone’s day brighter. It’s amazing to think that you’re doing some good, with a thing that just brings you joy in the first place. It’s not why I do it, but it’s a great benefit. It’s the frosting.

It’s hard when people who really wanted to like it don’t. That makes me sad, because I know that there was a story for them, but it’s just not the one that I could write. I think that sometimes for people who are that invested, it’s because they’re storytellers themselves. And maybe they need to cross that line—cross over to the dark side… join us!—and start creating their own stories.

SH:
That is an impossible situation, though. Because here you’ve created these characters in
Twilight
, and then readers are creating their own versions of those characters. So then you go on and write another book, and what your characters
did… isn’t necessarily what their characters would do. Maybe from their point of view, you’re manipulating their characters into doing things they wouldn’t do, even though of course you’re not.

SM:
It
is
funny…. I mean, it’s hard because I am very thin-skinned. I don’t take anything lightly. When I read a criticism, I immediately take it to heart and say: “Oh my gosh—maybe I
should
have done that! Oh, I
do
do this wrong!” I question myself very easily. I don’t question the characters, which is why I’m able to maintain my voice when I write—because that, to me, is the one thing that’s rock-solid. It doesn’t matter what my doubts are—they are who they are. And that’s a good thing.

SH:
It is. And despite all of the criticism, there are so many more fans than there are people who are angry about the books, but you hear the negative stuff so much louder.

SM:
Oh, always loud. You know, it reminds me of the movie
Pretty Woman
. Whenever that comes on TV, for some reason I can’t change the channel. [SH laughs] And there’s the one part where she says: It’s easier to believe the bad, you know.

SH:
Yeah.

SM:
That’s one of the things that I think is a constant struggle: to make the negative voices not as loud as—or at least just equal to—the positive voices. I know a lot of people who feel the same way. It’s easy to doubt yourself.

Maybe the answer is not to write a sequel. I’m considering that. You know, write one-shots—just one contained story, which I have a hard time doing. I guess I’ll just have to end it by killing the characters—because then it’ll be over, right? [Laughs] But if you kill off your characters—even minor characters—you still sob for everything that they were and could have been.

SH:
In the book I’m writing right now, there is a death—a major death. And every time I do a rewrite, as I get near that scene, and I know I have to face it again, my stomach just clenches and I get sick with dread. And as I go through that scene, I’m sobbing the entire time. It is not easy….

SM:
No. When you know in advance that you’re going to put yourself through that, it gives you some pause. And then you also have to know that it’s a different story than what people are expecting. That’s also the trouble with sequels.

SH:
The most letters I get from fans is for one book called
Princess Academy
, and the most requests I get from fans is for a sequel to that book. And then they tell me what happens in the sequel, you know? [SM laughs] And that’s how I know that I shouldn’t write it.

SM:
Right.

SH:
Because they’ve already told their own story. And that’s what I want, anyway… because I didn’t tie everything up completely. I just gave them an idea of where they might go in the future.

SH:
I loved
Breaking Dawn
. It’s hard to pick a favorite, but it might be my favorite. It was so the book I wanted, and so what it felt like it needed to be for me. And I have to say I loved the pregnancy and birth stuff, because I love the horror. Your books are romance, but there’s also this real, wonderful undercurrent of horror that’s different from any kind of horror I’ve read. And I love what horror can do: shine a light on what is real. And you make it bigger and more grotesque—just so you can see more clearly how grotesque what really happens is.

SM:
I do think that sometimes I put horror in unusual places for horror to exist, and I take it out of places where it might have been easy to have it. You know, that birth scene really was horror for me. We live in a time where having a baby is not much more dangerous than giving blood. I mean, it’s horrible, but it’s unlikely that you’re going to die.

But that’s something new for this century. You know, there was a time when childbirth was possibly the most terrifying thing you could do in your life, and you were literally looking death in the face when you went ahead with it. And so this was kind of a flashback to a time when that’s what every woman went through. Not that they got ripped apart, but they had no guarantees about whether they were going to live through it or not.

You know, I recently read—and I don’t read nonfiction, generally—
Becoming Jane Austen
. That’s the one subject that would get me to go out and read nonfiction. And the author’s conclusion was that one of the reasons Jane Austen might not have married when she did have the opportunity… well, she watched her very dear nieces and friends die in childbirth! And it was like a death sentence: You get married and you will
have children. You have children and you will die. [Laughs] I mean, it was a terrifying world.

And Bella’s pregnancy and childbirth, to me, were a way to kind of explore that concept of what childbirth used to be. That made it very specific for readers who were interested in that, and it did take it away from some of the fans who were expecting something different. I was aware that it was taking Bella in a new direction that wasn’t as relatable for a lot of people. I knew that it was going to be a problem for some readers.

SH:
Yeah.

SM:
My agent and my editor and my publisher all said: “Um, can we tone down the violence here? It’s making me a little sick.” [Laughs] But I was kind of proud of myself. I was thinking:
I actually wrote something violent enough to bother anybody? I’m such a marshmallow. Wow—you go, Stephenie!
[SH laughs] And I toned it down for them, and I made it a little bit less gruesome. Although I kept some of the gruesome stuff in, too.

SH:
I know you hate spoilers. You don’t want any leaks.

SM:
You know, though, I wonder with this last book… I wonder if it would have been an easier road for readers who have difficulties with
Breaking Dawn
if they’d known more in advance. If people had asked me, “Can vampires have babies with humans?” And, instead of saying, “I can’t answer questions about those crazy things that might or might not happen”—which is what I said because I didn’t want to make it super-obvious it was going to happen; I mean, that just seems wrong—I could have just said, “Yeah, they can.”
Maybe it would have been easier for them if they’d been expecting it.