I hate to admit it, but I love Twilight...
The other day I even watched the extra on the DVD, inlucing an interview with Stephanie Meyers.

According to her she never planned to be a writer, she just dreamed up the start of the story (fair enough, I get the best ideas while half asleep at night), and then she would write tens of pages per day, while simultaneously editing, and she just couldn't stop writing, and all of a sudden she was shocked to discover that the "thing" had become book length!

Struggling with my first oh-I-so-wish-it-were-a-book-because-I'd-kill-to-get-published, it pissed me off to hear her say how easy it had been to write Twilight.(Happy it pissed me off enough to get me writing tons tho.)

I loved the story of the tired hollow-eyed mum writing a best seller from pure fatigue... But... then I read on the cover that she has a degree in English Litterature...

...so is this just a marketing twist? I'm sure this is how it is for some writers... what do you think?
PS hope this does not break any forum rules, pls deleate if it does...

I haven't read Twilight. But I definitely think my first published book (Chips, Beans and Limousines) was a heck of a lot easier to write than the two sequels were, and easier to write than anything I've tried since. Sometimes you get a great idea and then it just flies.

Steerpike's sister > I'll admit to it, I'm jelous! Of both you and Stephanie Meyers ;-) :P

I agree, I think sometimes things do just fly. They're not easy in the sense of taking no work, but they're easy in the sense that it all seems to come very naturally and unselfconsciously: you get up in the morning knowing what you're going to do next, and you do it. 'Unselfconsciously' is probably why writers are more likely to tell these tales of early books: self-consciousness comes with the sense of having the book trade breathing down your neck. The flipside of that is that you get a whole lot more technique, and ways of solving problems consciously.

But yes, these stories are very tidied-up into 1, 3, 5, and 10 minute sound-bites. Doesn't mean they're not basically true, but does mean that it wasn't quite as simple as that, as it felt day-to-day at the time. But you edit your versions of the truth according to the medium, the time, the audience and so on... And then the journalist/blurb-writer etc. edit it even more.

I found TMOL pretty easy to write in the basic sense: it's 140,000 words, and it took me 9 months, including a tutorial on every chapter, and most of them workshopped as well. Took another 2 years to get the last 2% of it right and sell it, mind you, but fundamentally it didn't exist in August 2001, and it wholly existed in May 2002.

Emma

I think the first book you write is easy - in that you attach no expectations to it.
Once you dip your toe in the murky publishing waters you inevitably feel more weight on your shoulders and become self conscious.
HB x

Yes, what they say!

I admit I don't know too much about it, but I think there's several key things that come into this equation.
First of all, how a book's received can be remarkably volatile. For all Meyer's qualifications, there's many who dislike her style (Twilight is by far the most heavily criticised "popular" series I've ever heard of).
Then there is - of course - the content. I'd say that ingenuity and a touch of eccentricity helps keep things magical and charming, or, if done differently, mystifying and dark. Coming up with little bits here and there which raise a smile'n'eyebrow will keep things spicy, and play with readers' minds in a pleasurable way.
The central theme has quite an impact too. Twilight made use of vampires and werewolves, which would be likely to give it a good few "points" right from the get-go, in this day and age.

These are some of the most prominent aspects which can effect a book's reception. But all in all, I'd imagine that trying to include everything and just "brew a best-seller" isn't the best idea. Just write what you imagine, let your mind flow far beyond reality's limits, and let those colourful, ethereal threads you weave string your story together.

Emma, "a tutorial on every chapter" - how does that work?

Ben Yezir

trying to include everything and just "brew a best-seller" isn't the best idea.

There never was a truer word, specially since what you'd have to be doing is brewing something which will be a best seller in three or four years time. I blogged about that, ages ago, and it's still one of the posts people seem to remember, so I think it must have hit a nerve:

http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/2007/09/the-market-for-.html

Ben, it was part of the Masters I did here:

http://courses.glam.ac.uk/courses/297-mphil-in-writing

Emma

<Added>

I would point out, though, that TMOL only has 10 chapters...

Great points in your blog post Emma; I have been working in marketing and sales for too long. I tend to think of it as an advantage, but it does also impede creativity sometimes as you say.

It's all so true. I wrote the first draft of my first published novel, MTLL, in six weeks flat, in a fever of enjoyment, staying up all night. Like first love: there's nothing that ever matches that first careless rapture...

Rosy x

Glad you approve of the post, Pocahontas. It can be useful, having a marketing mindset, but as you say, I think you have to learn to put it aside while you're doing the actual writing.

I would say that I'm an exception to the first-fine-careless-rapture rule, in that the first novel I wrote took 5 years. But I hadn't discovered a process which worked for me, so I was editing as I went, then lost the middle third of it and had to re-create that, had a second child, did an A level and got divorced, etc. etc.

Emma

Okay, sweeping statements alert . . . I think the majority of writers work from creativity and love of what they do, then worry about selling it later. A few weeks ago, I went to a get-together of the Scattered Authors' Society, and I'd say only one of the 30 or so children's writers there is working out-and-out commercially (and making a lot of money at it, too). Having said that, there are definitely writers who consciously write books they know will sell, and that's their primary motivation. They enjoy the work, yes, but the enjoyment comes as much from selling work as anything else. James Patterson is a case in point, where his sentence, paragraph and chapter length is kept strictly to what he believes his audience can absorb without getting bored. Where the line gets fuzzy is with those best-selling writers - particularly in YA/children's - who have a vested interest in their audience believing they write from love, not money. So we get JKR's story of the struggling single mum, making a cuppa last in a cafe while she wrote her labour of love. And Stephanie Meyer claiming she never thought of being a writer until she dreamed the start of Twilight. These are good marketing stories but how much truth is in them we'll probably not know until the author's been dead a while and BBC4 make a documentary that reveals what actually happened. Quite possibly, they did start out on nothing but creative love - although I have my doubts - but what's for sure is where they are now is firmly inside the marketing mythosphere.

Terry

The problem here is that you're looking down the wrong end of the telescope. You might as well ask a lottery winner how they picked their numbers and get frustrated when the system doesn't work for you.

For whatever reason, Stephanie Meyers beat thousands of other hopefulls and got noticed. We might never know how good or bad that first script was - perhaps the agent/editor saw a spark of massive commercial prospect, perhaps they thought it was perfect as it was or could be kicked into shape. It really doesn't matter. What does matter is that it was they who picked the author - out of thousands of others - so ultimately the chance to get published was completely out of Stephanie Meyers control.

All a writer can do is to turn out the words. If you write enough to develop your skills you begin to beat the odds and might get noticed. If you fine tune your skills, then you change a "might" to a "probably will" but that's all you really can do.

Colin