What Hard Work Will Get You -- Or Not

I often hear from young writers, asking for advice. I try to answer their specific questions when I can. When asked for general advice, I have a kind of standard response that would have made my mother proud. You know. Success is all about hard work, study of craft, intensive reading of work in your genre, practice practice practice, with a seasoning of talent and luck. Don’t expect overnight success, I tell them. In order to be a writer, you have to love writing so much that you will write whether you get paid or not.
I began writing when I was a teenager, and though I didn’t write regularly in early adulthood, it took five years of constant writing (and four books) to get my work to where first an agent and then a publisher took interest in it.
I’m still learning, every single day. One thing I look for in a writing conference is a focus on craft, in addition to the usual sessions on how to find an agent or how to craft a query letter.
So it was with interest that I watched an interview with Stephenie Meyer that was included with the Twilight video. Although Meyer was an English major in college, she confessed that she just wanted a major that would allow her to read books for a grade. She took only one writing course in college and moved immediately into child-rearing after graduation.
You may have heard the story that the idea for Twilight came to Meyer in a dream. She wrote Twilight in three months, working around the demands of three small children. In a twinkling (my word) she had a three-book contract. And, of course, the Twilight series went on to be the kind of phenomenon that makes publishing history and bookseller bottom lines.
Hmmm. So much for long years of study and practice. Meyer was/is a voracious reader, but that seems to have been the sum total of her preparation for greatness.
Now, there are those who criticize the quality of the writing in the Twilight series. For instance, author Stephen King outraged Twilight fans when he described Meyer’s writing as “not very good.” Others have criticized the message she sends to young women.
But then, not everyone likes Stephen King, either. I’m not comparing myself to Meyer or King, but my books have come in for their share of criticism, too, along with some awards and good reviews. From a craft standpoint, Meyer certainly did better than I did on my first, unpublished try.
You’re never going to please everyone, but Meyer has been successful by every commercial measure. I think a lot of writers out there would gladly take the heat from critics if the first novel they wrote sold in the tens of millions.
What do you think? What’s the most important driver of publishing success for authors? Talent? Hard work? Luck? Connections?

The Difference Between Books and Movies

So I went to see the new Twilight movie. I went by myself so I wouldn’t have to put up with editorial comments from the men in my family. They are not the target audience. As Stephanie Zacharek suggests on Salon.com, it’s sometimes more fun to watch in a critic-free zone.
I thought Catherine Hardwicke did a good job of translating the book to film. Some things were done differently than I would have done them, some parts were cast differently than I would have chosen, but I am not a filmmaker, I’m a writer. I know my limitations.
Afterwards, I looked at the professional reviews on rottentomatoes.com. They were decidedly mixed, but I knew that it was possible that those who did not like the movie would not have liked the books, either.
I wanted to know what readers who loved the books thought of the film, so I checked out the comments on the Twilight LA Times blogs and on the forums on rottentomatoes. Some (by no means all) of the Twilight-lovers who posted were disappointed. They called the movie awkwardly comical, unbelievably bad, craptastic, and one of the worst remakes of a book I’ve ever seen. They described themselves as gravely disappointed and utterly and completely appalled.
What I’m saying is, those who were disappointed were REALLY disappointed.
Common themes seemed to be that the movie left things out, it was nothing like the book, it didn’t capture some crucial element in the book, it didn’t match the reader’s vision of the book, and it was too short and rushed.
It reminded me of my sister, after the Lord of the Rings movies came out. “They were pretty good,” she said, “but I can’t believe they left out Tom Bombadil.”
Well, I said, the movies were three hours long as it is. How long did you want them to be?

Keep in mind that I am a total LOTR nerd.
Probably the most common question I get from readers is, When are they going to make your books into a movie? Personally, I think it would be really cool if they were. But I think any reader who eagerly anticipates a movie made from a book she loves is risking disappointment.
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: books are a partnership between readers and authors. Each contributes to the final story. In effect, every reader reads a different book, shaped by her own emotions and experiences. When we watch a movie, we have to accede to the director’s vision. So it stands to reason that some if not most of us are going to be disappointed when we see our favorite books committed to film. The more favorite it is, the more we have contributed and the more disappointed we will be.
Given the fact that Twilight is a romance first and foremost, I think Twilight readers contributed more to the final story than, say, a reader of military science fiction.
There are things that a book can accomplish that a movie cannot. I persist in believing this.
So, gentle reader: be careful what you wish for.
PS: Twilight fans have voted with their cash. During its first weekend, Twilight the Movie scored $70.5 million in domestic sales on a production budget of only $37 million.