Confessions: A Diary Entry from July 29, 2007: A Twilight Dream
Okay, I want to write a novel. I read Twilight and New Moon by Stephenie Meyer, and it was so inspiring. I wanted to buy a novel that was in a series so that I could have a reason to be excited about the next installment. The books are so long, but that’s beautiful!
I began to seek out her [Stephenie Meyer’s] process, and it seems she had so much fun writing it. The characters came alive because she ‘got to know them.’ She just wrote. Period. She had a dream about one of the scenes, and from there, she just wrote. I love this process!
My writing has become inhibited. When I was younger, all I had to do was get an idea for a story, and I went right to work. I’m so tired of being afraid of everything, being careless, and wasting so much time. How many novels could I have written by now if I weren’t driven by fear? As many
‘How To Write A Novel’books as I own, I know the basics.Stephenie Meyer did not intend to become a writer, she just wrote the story, and then sent it into a publisher. Then, she became a sensation! I want to write something beautiful. Something breathtaking. I want to see it bound in sparkling hardcover binding with an abstract photograph about love. A story that sucks you in. If I can employ the same devices authors use to gain the audiences’ attention, but for God, how powerful would that type of story be?
Tonight, I was having a bit of nostalgia, both for my ‘early’ writing days, and for Twilight. I had a profound experience when I first read Twilight. I’m sure we all hear a lot of stories like this nowadays! But before all the glitz, Hollywood premieres, and merchandise with the words ‘Team Edward’, I read the novel and saw an entirely different side of the writing process. I was in awe with my reaction to it. How was Stephenie able to completely hold me transfixed? I came away from it totally believing in her portrayal of vampires, and the beauty of first love.
Before that time, penning a story seemed to be more work than ‘play.’ But in reading Twilight, I became saturated in all of the love, and all of the life that Stephenie put into it. Thus, showing me that for every world you create, or a writer personifies to the page, you must be completely enamored, awestruck, and transfixed with that world. Then, and only then will a reader be moved by it.
I always look at Twilight, more than the rest of the novels, as a dreamers’ novel. It’s the novel for writers who are simply taken away by their imaginations, and are willing to move freely with it. Who’s driven more by dreams than fears. It reminds me of those times when you are just fleshing out a project, and your are so driven, so moved, and taken over with it that you feel as if you can achieve anything; Before all the voices and all the critics come to steal your thunder. It comes so wildly, but when you love something so much you respond like a child: voraciously, curiously, and full of wonder.
I can go on forever…but yeah. Whatever gives you that feeling that makes you want to keep going in your project, roll with it! Ignore the haters.
