SH: Not just this story. But very active storytelling and creating, I‘m sure, had been percolating in you for years.
SM: It was a creative outlet that was the best one I‘ve ever found. I‘ve done other creative things: birthday cakes and really great Halloween costumes, if I do say so myself. I was always looking for ways to creatively express myself. And it was always kind of a frustrating thing — it was never enough. Being a mom, especially when kids are younger — when they get older, it‘s a lot easier — you have to be about them every minute. And a lot of who Stephenie is was slipping away.
SH: Yeah.
SM: The writing brought that back in with such force that it was just an obsession I couldn‘t… I couldn‘t be away from it. And that was, I think, kind of the dam bursting, and that huge surge at first. And then I learned to manage it.
SH: You would have to. But what a tremendous way to start!
SM: It was. It felt really good — it felt really, really good. And I think when you find something that you can do that makes you feel that way, you just grasp on to it.
SH: So you had never written a short story before.
SM: I had not ever considered writing seriously. When I was in high school, I thought of some stories that might be a good book, but I didn‘t take it seriously, and I never said: ―Gosh, I‘m going to do that.‖ I considered it momentarily — the same way I considered being a professional ballerina.
SH: Right.
SM: Oh, and I was going to be so good [SH laughs] in my Nutcracker. I would have been fantastic — except that, obviously, I have no rhythmic skill, or the build for a ballerina, at all. [SH laughs] So it was like one of those nonsensical things — like wanting to be a dryad.
And then, when I was in college, I actually wrote a couple chapters of something… because I think it‘s the law: When you‘re an English major, you have to consider being an author as a career. But it was a ridiculous thing. I mean, there‘s no way you can make a living as a writer — everybody knows that. And, really, it‘s too hard to become an editor — that‘s just not a practical solution. If you‘re going to support yourself, you have to think realistically. You know, I was going to go to law school. I knew I could do that. I knew that if I worked hard, I‘d be kind of guaranteed that I could at least get a decent job somewhere that would pay the bills.
There‘s no guarantee like that with writing, or anything in the publishing industry.
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.
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‘ helclass="underline" 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.