Sporking
(Crossposted from
twilight_sucks)
I'm not sure if this has been put on here before, but I couldn't help it.
Located here
, if you want to read it without my help.
My comments are between the bold parentheses, obviously. Enjoy the lulz
The Story Behind Twilight
I get a ton of questions about how I came up with the story of Twilight and how I got it published. I may be killing my FAQ page by doing this, but here is the whole story:
(Warning: there are Twilight spoilers contained in the following; if you don't want to ruin the suspense, stop reading.....now (Oh, she must be serious. She had to put one and a half ellipses). Warning #2: As you might have guessed from the length of my book, I can't tell a short story (Unfortunately, you can, but you have to tell us about Edward’s looks every ten words so nothing happens for the majority of the book) -this is going to take a while (Oh dear god.). You have been warned(Thank Edward, otherwise I might’ve lost a brain cell without knowing!).)
The Writing: I know the exact date (Creepy, much? You stalk the date of your book.) that I began writing Twilight, because it was also the first day of swim lessons for my kids (Wow. Let them go drown themselves and you write a shitty book. How motherly.). So I can say with certainty that it all started on June 2, 2003 (Did anyone actually care when? No one? Oh, good.). Up to this point, I had not written anything at all besides a few chapters (of other stories) fanfics that some of my gal pals and I giggled over that I never got very far on (I wonder why? It’s not like doing research and developing an actual plot helps.), and nothing at all since the birth of my first son, six years earlier(We really don’t care how old he was. You shouldn’t blame a little kid for your inability to write).
I woke up (on that June 2nd) (This is the second time she’s mentioned it. Really. Is June 2nd prophetic?) from a very vivid dream. In my dream, two people were having an intense conversation in a meadow in the woods. One of these people was just your average girl. The other person was fantastically beautiful, sparkly, and a vampire. They were discussing the difficulties inherent in the facts that A) they were falling in love with each other while B) the vampire was particularly attracted to the scent of her blood, and was having a difficult time restraining himself from killing her immediately. For what is essentially a transcript of my dream, please see Chapter 13 ("Confessions") of the book.
(Oh, this makes everything make sense now. You guys, she’s just basing her sparkly vampires on her dreams! Most of us don’t bother translating batshit crazy dreams into a book. Clearly she should’ve just interpreted the dream as meaning she should spice up her sex life, and moved on. But no.)
Though I had a million things to do (Damn you for not doing those things! DAMN YOU) (i.e. making breakfast for hungry children (CLEARLY NOT IMPORTANT. I mean, sheesh. Kids don’t need food), dressing and changing the diapers of said children, finding the swimsuits that no one ever puts away in the right place, etc.), I stayed in bed, thinking about the dream (How productive of you). I was so intrigued by the nameless couple's story that I hated the idea of forgetting it; it was the kind of dream that makes you want to call your friend and bore her with a detailed description (You’d think this would be a warning sign. If the details would have bored her friend...). (Also, the vampire was just so darned good-looking, that I didn't want to lose the mental image.) Unwillingly, I eventually got up and did the immediate necessities (Good to know a hot, pubescent vampire that sparkles makes you unwilling to feed your children), and then put everything that I possibly could on the back burner and sat down at the computer to write-something I hadn't done in so long that I wondered why I was bothering (We still are, Stephie-poo. We still are.). But I didn't want to lose the dream, so I typed out as much as I could remember, calling the characters "he" and "she." (Oh good. You know your pronouns)
From that point on, not one day passed that I did not write something. On bad days, I would only type out a page or two; on good days, I would finish a chapter and then some. I mostly wrote at night, after the kids were asleep so that I could concentrate for longer than five minutes without being interrupted (The nerve of those brats! Interrupting your precious concentration with trivial needs such as being hungry, wanting affection, etc!). I started from the scene in the meadow and wrote through to the end. Then I went back to the beginning and wrote until the pieces matched up (This...explains...everything.). I drove the "golden spike"(Diamond spike! DIAMOND) that connected them in late August, three months later.(Oh dear god. It only took you 3 months to write your book??)
It took me a while to find names for my anonymous duo (clever). For my vampire (who I was in love with from day one) (I genuinely pity your husband. He can’t hope to compete with a teen vampire who sparkles) I decided to use a name that had once been considered romantic, but had fallen out of popularity for decades. Charlotte Bronte's Mr. Rochester and Jane Austen's Mr. Ferrars were the characters that led me to the name Edward. I tried it on for size, and found that it fit well. My female lead was harder (...). Nothing I named her seemed just right. After spending so much time with her, I loved her like a daughter (You’re joking), and no name was good enough (So, you spent this long naming your children? No name was good enough? Try numbers). Finally, inspired by that love, I gave her the name I was saving for my daughter (Oh. My. God. Can you imagine the horror of being born? “I was going to name you Bella, but I named my character that instead, Mildred”), who had never shown up and was unlikely to put in an appearance at this point (No kidding. I wouldn’t have sex with you either if you were thinking about Edward): Isabella. Huzzah! Edward and Bella were named. For the rest of the characters, I did a lot of searching in old census records, looking for popular names in the times that they'd been born (Why couldn’t you do more research about the times they were born?). Some trivia (Oh, goodie): Rosalie was originally "Carol" and Jasper was first "Ronald." I like the new names much better, but every now and then I will slip up and type Carol or Ron by accident. It really confuses the people who read my rough drafts. (I bet it does...on top of the shitty writing!)
For my setting, I knew I needed someplace ridiculously rainy (Gigglesnort). I turned to Google, as I do for all my research needs (I find a shitload more helpful things on Google. You must make the most mundane, vague searches), and looked for the place with the most rainfall in the U.S. This turned out to be the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. I pulled up maps of the area and studied them, looking for something small, out of the way, surrounded by forest... And there, right where I wanted it to be, was a tiny town called "Forks." (Did you apologize to them? I will. The people of Forks, Washington: I’m so, terribly sorry) It couldn't have been more perfect if I had named it myself (You do think highly about yourself, don’t you...). I did a Google image search on the area, and if the name hadn't sold me, the gorgeous photographs would have done the trick (Gorgeous-like Edward!). (Images like these of the Hoh Rainforest (a short drive from Forks). Also see forks-web.com ). In researching Forks, I discovered the La Push Reservation, home to the Quileute Tribe. The Quileute story is fascinating, and a few fictional members of the tribe quickly became intrinsic to my story. (We steal their land, now Meyers steals their pride. Will it ever stop?)
All this time, Bella and Edward were, quite literally, voices in my head (At this point, I’d be worried about mental stability...). They simply wouldn't shut up (Yep. Hello, Dr. Drew?). I'd stay up as late as I could stand trying to get all the stuff in my mind typed out, and then crawl, exhausted, into bed (my baby still wasn't sleeping through the night, yet (Again, the nerve of these kids!)) only to have another conversation start in my head. I hated to lose anything by forgetting, so I'd get up and head back down to the computer. Eventually, I got a pen and notebook for beside my bed to jot notes down so I could get some freakin' sleep. It was always an exciting challenge in the morning to try to decipher the stuff I'd scrawled across the page in the dark. (Sweetie, if your life is so boring that reading your half-asleep scribblings is an exciting challenge, you really need to get out more.)
During the day, I couldn't stay away from the computer, either (Oh dear). When I was stuck at swim lessons (Again, with her irresposible kids! Crowding into her work time), out in 115 degrees of Phoenix sunshine, I would plot and scheme and come home with so much new stuff that I couldn't type fast enough. It was your typical Arizona summer, hot, sunny, hot, and hot, (Oh ho! I c wut u did ther! It’s really hot! Hurrhurr) but when I think back to those three months, I remember rain and cool green things, like I really spent the summer in the Olympic Rainforest. (So, voices in your head, and delusions...)
When I'd finished the body of the novel, I started writing epilogues...lots of epilogues (Wow). This eventually clued me in to the fact that I wasn't ready to let go of was prepared to marry my characters, and I started working on the sequel (Why, God, why?!). Meanwhile, I continued to edit Twilight in a very obsessive-compulsive way. (Oh! Voices, delusions, and obsessive-compulsive)
My older sister, Emily, was the only one who really knew what I was up to (How do you hide this from your husband?). In June, I'd started sending her chapters as I finished them, and she soon became my cheerleading section. She was always checking in to see if I had something new for her. It was Emily who first suggested, after I'd finished, that I should try to get Twilight published (Clearly, literature taste doesn’t run in the family). I was so stunned by the fact that I'd actually finished a whole, entire book (As opposed to a half, three quater, or eight-sixtheenths book), that I decided to look into it.
Getting Published: To put it mildly, I was naive about publishing. (That’s mildly?) I thought it worked like this: you printed a copy of your novel, wrapped it up in brown paper, and sent it off to a publishing house (Everyone knows it’s purple paper. Or sparkly! Geeze, Stephie). Ho ho ho (Santa?), that's a good one. I started googling (naturally) and began to discover that this was not the way it is done (No shit, sherlock). (Movies lie to us! Why?! (Do I really need to answer this? I mean, really. Did you think that Dracula sipping on the woman was real? That a vampire in Louisiana named Lestat likes to hide you in his coffin before turning you?) A side note: you will not be able to enjoy the new Steve Martin version of Cheaper by the Dozen when you know how insanely impossible the publishing scenario it contains is. (I can enjoy that movie just fine, thanks. It wasn’t made to mislead you. Again with you! Everything is about you!)) The whole set up with query letters, literary agents, simultaneous submissions vs. exclusive submissions, synopsizes, etc., was extremely intimidating (Not intimidating enough), and I almost quit there (Am I in heaven?). It certainly wasn't belief in my fabulous talent that made me push forward (But you believe you have fabulous talent, nonetheless); I think it was just that I loved my characters so much (Uh huh...), and they were so real to me (Delusions again...), that I wanted other people to know them, too (Tell your shrink about them then).
I subscribed to WritersMarket.com and compiled a list of small publishers that accepted unsolicited submissions and a few literary agencies. It was around this time that my little sister, Heidi (Again! This family must not know anything about literature), mentioned Janet Evanovich's website to me. In her Q and A for writers section, Janet E. mentioned Writers House, among a few others, as "the real thing" in the world of literary agencies. Writers House went on my wish list as the most desirable and also least likely. (Note to self: Never publish with Writers House. They don’t even put in an apostrophe.)
I sent out around fifteen queries (and I still get residual butterflies in my stomach when I drive by the mailbox I sent the letters from (Ook...)-mailing them was terrifying (And irrational fears! Why didn’t anyone notice the signs?!).). I will state, for the record (You better. You’re on trial-or should be! Publishing shit shouldn’t be legal.), that my queries truly sucked (No duh. Your stories aren’t roses either), and I don't blame anyone who sent me a rejection (I did get seven or eight of those. I still have them all, too (You rub it in their faces now, don’t you?)). The only rejection that really hurt was from a small agent who actually read the first chapter before she dropped the axe on me (I applaud you, agent-that-is-so-small-and-unimportant-it-shall-remain-nameless). The meanest rejection I got came after Little, Brown had picked me up for a three-book deal (Can I have a copy? For the lulz), so it didn't bother me at all. I'll admit that I considered sending back a copy of that rejection stapled to the write-up my deal got in Publisher's Weekly, but I took the higher road. (How Christian of you...Mormons consider themselves Christian, right?)
My big break came in the form of an assistant at Writers House named Genevieve (You stupid, stupid girl). I didn't find out until much later just how lucky I was; it turns out that Gen didn't know that 130,000 words is a whole heck of a lot of words (Red flag! She doesn’t know what big numbers mean!). If she'd known that 130K words would equal 500 pages, she probably wouldn't have asked to see it. But she didn't know (picture me wiping the sweat from my brow (Ew)), and she did ask for the first three chapters. I was thrilled to get a positive response, but a little worried because I felt the beginning of the book wasn't the strongest part (If you think so, shouldn’t that tell you something?). I mailed off those three chapters and got a letter back a few weeks later (I could barely get it open, my hands were so weak with fear (Mailing letters and Opening letters phobia?)). It was a very nice letter. She'd gone back with a pen and twice underlined the part where she'd typed how much she enjoyed the first three chapters (I still have that letter, of course (Of course)), and she asked for the whole manuscript. That was the exact moment when I realized that I might actually see Twilight in print, and really one of the happiest points in my whole life. I did a lot of screaming. (Which is where, as a reasonable husband, I would ask for a divorce.)
About a month after I sent in the manuscript, I got a call from Jodi Reamer, an honest to goodness literary agent (Thanks for clarifying she wasn’t a fake), who wanted to represent my book. I tried really hard to sound like a professional and a grownup during that conversation (But you didn’t bother while writing?), but I'm not sure if I fooled her. Again, my luck was tremendous (and I don't usually have good luck-I've never won anything in my life, and no one ever catches a fish when I'm in the boat) because Jodi is the uber-agent (Hurr. Usin’ some slang to tie in with the “in” crowd. Gotcha! Winkwink). I couldn't have ended up in better hands. She's part lawyer, part ninja (she's working on earning her black belt right now, no kidding), a pretty amazing editor in her own right, and a great friend. (You’ll be announcing your engagement any day now, won’t you?)
Jodi and I worked for two weeks on getting Twilight into shape (You tried getting it in shape?! How did anyone read it before?) before sending it to editors. The first thing we worked on was the title, which started out as Forks (and I still have a teeny soft spot for that name (We know. The town of Forks is your baby after all.)). Then we polished up a few rough spots (what? How is that polishing?), and Jodi sent it out to nine different publishing houses. This really messed with my ability to sleep, but luckily I wasn't in suspense for long. (Luckily, because the world would end if you didn’t get your beauty sleep. After all, Edward might not love you-er, Bella, anymore.)
Megan Tingley, of Megan Tingley Books, of Little, Brown and Company, read Twilight on a cross-country flight and came back to Jodi the day after the Thanksgiving weekend with a preemptive deal so huge that I honestly thought Jodi was pulling my leg-especially the part where she turned the offer down and asked for more. The upshot was that (because someone wanting to publish your book isn’t an “upshot” at all), by the end of the day, I was trying to process the information that not only was my book going to be published by one of the biggest young adult publishers in the country, but that they were going to pay me for it. For a very long time, I was convinced it was a really cruel practical joke (I’m still convinced it is. On us), but I couldn't imagine who would go to these wild extremes to play a hoax on such an insignificant little hausfrau. (Wow. She does have Bella’s “I’m so humble, I’m so perfect, I’m so beautiful” attitude.)
And that's how, in the course of six months, Twilight was dreamed, written, and accepted for publication. (That’s nothing to brag about, dear.)
Things keep getting crazier (Dear God, how?), what with the movie deal and all the pre-publication attention that Twilight continues (Shouldn’t that be post-publication?) to receive. Though I've gotten impatient from time to time (Impatient? About what?), I'm glad I've had the last two years to try to come to terms with the situation. I'm greatly looking forward to finally having Twilight on the shelves, and more than a little frightened, too. Overall, it's been a true labor of love, love for Edward and Bella and all the rest of my imaginary friends (In summary: voices in your head, delusions, obsessive-compulsive disorder, irrational phobias about postal services, and imaginary friends.), and I'm thrilled that other people get to meet them now.
Does it concern anyone else that she doesn't mention her husband once?
twilight_sucks)
I'm not sure if this has been put on here before, but I couldn't help it.
Located here
, if you want to read it without my help.
My comments are between the bold parentheses, obviously. Enjoy the lulz
The Story Behind Twilight
I get a ton of questions about how I came up with the story of Twilight and how I got it published. I may be killing my FAQ page by doing this, but here is the whole story:
(Warning: there are Twilight spoilers contained in the following; if you don't want to ruin the suspense, stop reading.....now (Oh, she must be serious. She had to put one and a half ellipses). Warning #2: As you might have guessed from the length of my book, I can't tell a short story (Unfortunately, you can, but you have to tell us about Edward’s looks every ten words so nothing happens for the majority of the book) -this is going to take a while (Oh dear god.). You have been warned(Thank Edward, otherwise I might’ve lost a brain cell without knowing!).)
The Writing: I know the exact date (Creepy, much? You stalk the date of your book.) that I began writing Twilight, because it was also the first day of swim lessons for my kids (Wow. Let them go drown themselves and you write a shitty book. How motherly.). So I can say with certainty that it all started on June 2, 2003 (Did anyone actually care when? No one? Oh, good.). Up to this point, I had not written anything at all besides a few chapters (of other stories) fanfics that some of my gal pals and I giggled over that I never got very far on (I wonder why? It’s not like doing research and developing an actual plot helps.), and nothing at all since the birth of my first son, six years earlier(We really don’t care how old he was. You shouldn’t blame a little kid for your inability to write).
I woke up (on that June 2nd) (This is the second time she’s mentioned it. Really. Is June 2nd prophetic?) from a very vivid dream. In my dream, two people were having an intense conversation in a meadow in the woods. One of these people was just your average girl. The other person was fantastically beautiful, sparkly, and a vampire. They were discussing the difficulties inherent in the facts that A) they were falling in love with each other while B) the vampire was particularly attracted to the scent of her blood, and was having a difficult time restraining himself from killing her immediately. For what is essentially a transcript of my dream, please see Chapter 13 ("Confessions") of the book.
(Oh, this makes everything make sense now. You guys, she’s just basing her sparkly vampires on her dreams! Most of us don’t bother translating batshit crazy dreams into a book. Clearly she should’ve just interpreted the dream as meaning she should spice up her sex life, and moved on. But no.)
Though I had a million things to do (Damn you for not doing those things! DAMN YOU) (i.e. making breakfast for hungry children (CLEARLY NOT IMPORTANT. I mean, sheesh. Kids don’t need food), dressing and changing the diapers of said children, finding the swimsuits that no one ever puts away in the right place, etc.), I stayed in bed, thinking about the dream (How productive of you). I was so intrigued by the nameless couple's story that I hated the idea of forgetting it; it was the kind of dream that makes you want to call your friend and bore her with a detailed description (You’d think this would be a warning sign. If the details would have bored her friend...). (Also, the vampire was just so darned good-looking, that I didn't want to lose the mental image.) Unwillingly, I eventually got up and did the immediate necessities (Good to know a hot, pubescent vampire that sparkles makes you unwilling to feed your children), and then put everything that I possibly could on the back burner and sat down at the computer to write-something I hadn't done in so long that I wondered why I was bothering (We still are, Stephie-poo. We still are.). But I didn't want to lose the dream, so I typed out as much as I could remember, calling the characters "he" and "she." (Oh good. You know your pronouns)
From that point on, not one day passed that I did not write something. On bad days, I would only type out a page or two; on good days, I would finish a chapter and then some. I mostly wrote at night, after the kids were asleep so that I could concentrate for longer than five minutes without being interrupted (The nerve of those brats! Interrupting your precious concentration with trivial needs such as being hungry, wanting affection, etc!). I started from the scene in the meadow and wrote through to the end. Then I went back to the beginning and wrote until the pieces matched up (This...explains...everything.). I drove the "golden spike"(Diamond spike! DIAMOND) that connected them in late August, three months later.(Oh dear god. It only took you 3 months to write your book??)
It took me a while to find names for my anonymous duo (clever). For my vampire (who I was in love with from day one) (I genuinely pity your husband. He can’t hope to compete with a teen vampire who sparkles) I decided to use a name that had once been considered romantic, but had fallen out of popularity for decades. Charlotte Bronte's Mr. Rochester and Jane Austen's Mr. Ferrars were the characters that led me to the name Edward. I tried it on for size, and found that it fit well. My female lead was harder (...). Nothing I named her seemed just right. After spending so much time with her, I loved her like a daughter (You’re joking), and no name was good enough (So, you spent this long naming your children? No name was good enough? Try numbers). Finally, inspired by that love, I gave her the name I was saving for my daughter (Oh. My. God. Can you imagine the horror of being born? “I was going to name you Bella, but I named my character that instead, Mildred”), who had never shown up and was unlikely to put in an appearance at this point (No kidding. I wouldn’t have sex with you either if you were thinking about Edward): Isabella. Huzzah! Edward and Bella were named. For the rest of the characters, I did a lot of searching in old census records, looking for popular names in the times that they'd been born (Why couldn’t you do more research about the times they were born?). Some trivia (Oh, goodie): Rosalie was originally "Carol" and Jasper was first "Ronald." I like the new names much better, but every now and then I will slip up and type Carol or Ron by accident. It really confuses the people who read my rough drafts. (I bet it does...on top of the shitty writing!)
For my setting, I knew I needed someplace ridiculously rainy (Gigglesnort). I turned to Google, as I do for all my research needs (I find a shitload more helpful things on Google. You must make the most mundane, vague searches), and looked for the place with the most rainfall in the U.S. This turned out to be the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. I pulled up maps of the area and studied them, looking for something small, out of the way, surrounded by forest... And there, right where I wanted it to be, was a tiny town called "Forks." (Did you apologize to them? I will. The people of Forks, Washington: I’m so, terribly sorry) It couldn't have been more perfect if I had named it myself (You do think highly about yourself, don’t you...). I did a Google image search on the area, and if the name hadn't sold me, the gorgeous photographs would have done the trick (Gorgeous-like Edward!). (Images like these of the Hoh Rainforest (a short drive from Forks). Also see forks-web.com ). In researching Forks, I discovered the La Push Reservation, home to the Quileute Tribe. The Quileute story is fascinating, and a few fictional members of the tribe quickly became intrinsic to my story. (We steal their land, now Meyers steals their pride. Will it ever stop?)
All this time, Bella and Edward were, quite literally, voices in my head (At this point, I’d be worried about mental stability...). They simply wouldn't shut up (Yep. Hello, Dr. Drew?). I'd stay up as late as I could stand trying to get all the stuff in my mind typed out, and then crawl, exhausted, into bed (my baby still wasn't sleeping through the night, yet (Again, the nerve of these kids!)) only to have another conversation start in my head. I hated to lose anything by forgetting, so I'd get up and head back down to the computer. Eventually, I got a pen and notebook for beside my bed to jot notes down so I could get some freakin' sleep. It was always an exciting challenge in the morning to try to decipher the stuff I'd scrawled across the page in the dark. (Sweetie, if your life is so boring that reading your half-asleep scribblings is an exciting challenge, you really need to get out more.)
During the day, I couldn't stay away from the computer, either (Oh dear). When I was stuck at swim lessons (Again, with her irresposible kids! Crowding into her work time), out in 115 degrees of Phoenix sunshine, I would plot and scheme and come home with so much new stuff that I couldn't type fast enough. It was your typical Arizona summer, hot, sunny, hot, and hot, (Oh ho! I c wut u did ther! It’s really hot! Hurrhurr) but when I think back to those three months, I remember rain and cool green things, like I really spent the summer in the Olympic Rainforest. (So, voices in your head, and delusions...)
When I'd finished the body of the novel, I started writing epilogues...lots of epilogues (Wow). This eventually clued me in to the fact that I wasn't ready to let go of was prepared to marry my characters, and I started working on the sequel (Why, God, why?!). Meanwhile, I continued to edit Twilight in a very obsessive-compulsive way. (Oh! Voices, delusions, and obsessive-compulsive)
My older sister, Emily, was the only one who really knew what I was up to (How do you hide this from your husband?). In June, I'd started sending her chapters as I finished them, and she soon became my cheerleading section. She was always checking in to see if I had something new for her. It was Emily who first suggested, after I'd finished, that I should try to get Twilight published (Clearly, literature taste doesn’t run in the family). I was so stunned by the fact that I'd actually finished a whole, entire book (As opposed to a half, three quater, or eight-sixtheenths book), that I decided to look into it.
Getting Published: To put it mildly, I was naive about publishing. (That’s mildly?) I thought it worked like this: you printed a copy of your novel, wrapped it up in brown paper, and sent it off to a publishing house (Everyone knows it’s purple paper. Or sparkly! Geeze, Stephie). Ho ho ho (Santa?), that's a good one. I started googling (naturally) and began to discover that this was not the way it is done (No shit, sherlock). (Movies lie to us! Why?! (Do I really need to answer this? I mean, really. Did you think that Dracula sipping on the woman was real? That a vampire in Louisiana named Lestat likes to hide you in his coffin before turning you?) A side note: you will not be able to enjoy the new Steve Martin version of Cheaper by the Dozen when you know how insanely impossible the publishing scenario it contains is. (I can enjoy that movie just fine, thanks. It wasn’t made to mislead you. Again with you! Everything is about you!)) The whole set up with query letters, literary agents, simultaneous submissions vs. exclusive submissions, synopsizes, etc., was extremely intimidating (Not intimidating enough), and I almost quit there (Am I in heaven?). It certainly wasn't belief in my fabulous talent that made me push forward (But you believe you have fabulous talent, nonetheless); I think it was just that I loved my characters so much (Uh huh...), and they were so real to me (Delusions again...), that I wanted other people to know them, too (Tell your shrink about them then).
I subscribed to WritersMarket.com and compiled a list of small publishers that accepted unsolicited submissions and a few literary agencies. It was around this time that my little sister, Heidi (Again! This family must not know anything about literature), mentioned Janet Evanovich's website to me. In her Q and A for writers section, Janet E. mentioned Writers House, among a few others, as "the real thing" in the world of literary agencies. Writers House went on my wish list as the most desirable and also least likely. (Note to self: Never publish with Writers House. They don’t even put in an apostrophe.)
I sent out around fifteen queries (and I still get residual butterflies in my stomach when I drive by the mailbox I sent the letters from (Ook...)-mailing them was terrifying (And irrational fears! Why didn’t anyone notice the signs?!).). I will state, for the record (You better. You’re on trial-or should be! Publishing shit shouldn’t be legal.), that my queries truly sucked (No duh. Your stories aren’t roses either), and I don't blame anyone who sent me a rejection (I did get seven or eight of those. I still have them all, too (You rub it in their faces now, don’t you?)). The only rejection that really hurt was from a small agent who actually read the first chapter before she dropped the axe on me (I applaud you, agent-that-is-so-small-and-unimportant-it-shall-remain-nameless). The meanest rejection I got came after Little, Brown had picked me up for a three-book deal (Can I have a copy? For the lulz), so it didn't bother me at all. I'll admit that I considered sending back a copy of that rejection stapled to the write-up my deal got in Publisher's Weekly, but I took the higher road. (How Christian of you...Mormons consider themselves Christian, right?)
My big break came in the form of an assistant at Writers House named Genevieve (You stupid, stupid girl). I didn't find out until much later just how lucky I was; it turns out that Gen didn't know that 130,000 words is a whole heck of a lot of words (Red flag! She doesn’t know what big numbers mean!). If she'd known that 130K words would equal 500 pages, she probably wouldn't have asked to see it. But she didn't know (picture me wiping the sweat from my brow (Ew)), and she did ask for the first three chapters. I was thrilled to get a positive response, but a little worried because I felt the beginning of the book wasn't the strongest part (If you think so, shouldn’t that tell you something?). I mailed off those three chapters and got a letter back a few weeks later (I could barely get it open, my hands were so weak with fear (Mailing letters and Opening letters phobia?)). It was a very nice letter. She'd gone back with a pen and twice underlined the part where she'd typed how much she enjoyed the first three chapters (I still have that letter, of course (Of course)), and she asked for the whole manuscript. That was the exact moment when I realized that I might actually see Twilight in print, and really one of the happiest points in my whole life. I did a lot of screaming. (Which is where, as a reasonable husband, I would ask for a divorce.)
About a month after I sent in the manuscript, I got a call from Jodi Reamer, an honest to goodness literary agent (Thanks for clarifying she wasn’t a fake), who wanted to represent my book. I tried really hard to sound like a professional and a grownup during that conversation (But you didn’t bother while writing?), but I'm not sure if I fooled her. Again, my luck was tremendous (and I don't usually have good luck-I've never won anything in my life, and no one ever catches a fish when I'm in the boat) because Jodi is the uber-agent (Hurr. Usin’ some slang to tie in with the “in” crowd. Gotcha! Winkwink). I couldn't have ended up in better hands. She's part lawyer, part ninja (she's working on earning her black belt right now, no kidding), a pretty amazing editor in her own right, and a great friend. (You’ll be announcing your engagement any day now, won’t you?)
Jodi and I worked for two weeks on getting Twilight into shape (You tried getting it in shape?! How did anyone read it before?) before sending it to editors. The first thing we worked on was the title, which started out as Forks (and I still have a teeny soft spot for that name (We know. The town of Forks is your baby after all.)). Then we polished up a few rough spots (what? How is that polishing?), and Jodi sent it out to nine different publishing houses. This really messed with my ability to sleep, but luckily I wasn't in suspense for long. (Luckily, because the world would end if you didn’t get your beauty sleep. After all, Edward might not love you-er, Bella, anymore.)
Megan Tingley, of Megan Tingley Books, of Little, Brown and Company, read Twilight on a cross-country flight and came back to Jodi the day after the Thanksgiving weekend with a preemptive deal so huge that I honestly thought Jodi was pulling my leg-especially the part where she turned the offer down and asked for more. The upshot was that (because someone wanting to publish your book isn’t an “upshot” at all), by the end of the day, I was trying to process the information that not only was my book going to be published by one of the biggest young adult publishers in the country, but that they were going to pay me for it. For a very long time, I was convinced it was a really cruel practical joke (I’m still convinced it is. On us), but I couldn't imagine who would go to these wild extremes to play a hoax on such an insignificant little hausfrau. (Wow. She does have Bella’s “I’m so humble, I’m so perfect, I’m so beautiful” attitude.)
And that's how, in the course of six months, Twilight was dreamed, written, and accepted for publication. (That’s nothing to brag about, dear.)
Things keep getting crazier (Dear God, how?), what with the movie deal and all the pre-publication attention that Twilight continues (Shouldn’t that be post-publication?) to receive. Though I've gotten impatient from time to time (Impatient? About what?), I'm glad I've had the last two years to try to come to terms with the situation. I'm greatly looking forward to finally having Twilight on the shelves, and more than a little frightened, too. Overall, it's been a true labor of love, love for Edward and Bella and all the rest of my imaginary friends (In summary: voices in your head, delusions, obsessive-compulsive disorder, irrational phobias about postal services, and imaginary friends.), and I'm thrilled that other people get to meet them now.
Does it concern anyone else that she doesn't mention her husband once?