The Movement of the Earth -- Author's Note
Title: The Movement of the Earth
Author: audreyii_fic
Fandom: Twilight (Team Jacob)
Rating: T
Characters: Bella, Jacob, Charlie, and others (J/B)
Genre: Romance/Angst/Wolfpack!Humor
Warnings: Language, violence, and references to adult behavior
banner courtesy of lilabut
Summary: Jacob imprints on Bella. It changes things. A re-write of New Moon, beginning on page 242 in Chapter 10: "The Meadow." ( Link to the beginning.)
Author's Note:
[For the record: I nearly wrote a version of this to tag to the very beginning of the fic. Eventually I held off. My vanity cried bitter, bitter tears, but my sense of fic decorum refused to let me start a story with one of those "I know it sucks but read it anyway" wanks. So I swallowed my pride, settled for sanity updates, and, well... here we are. Better late than never.]
Author's Note
(or, The Movement of the Earth FAQ)
(or, "What the fuck was that?!")
Normally I don't do author's notes, but The Movement of the Earth really does require explanation. Otherwise, the only logical conclusion would be that I've suffered some sort of traumatic brain injury. I haven't. I just did this instead of, say, walking across hot coals or climbing Mount Everest -- both of which, in retrospect, would have been less painful.
For I have looked into the eye of the beast, ladies and gentlemen, and it is Stephenie Meyer's writing style.
Why in God's name did you write in Meyer-voice?
Short answer: To prove a point.
Long answer: So, mid-summer, I got into a conversation with a friend of mine who actually likes these books. As always, the discussion quickly degenerated into me yelling about Stephenie Meyer. A lot. In detail. As I paused to catch my breath after a long rant about the dangers of romanticizing stalking (always a favorite), my friend said, "You're a snob."
"Of course I am, but that's not the point."
"Look, I know Meyer can't write. Her prose is really awkward--"
"Is crap, you mean."
"--so it's not like she could have done any better. This is just silly trash and you take it way too seriously."
After another long, snotty rant about how I wasn't taking it too seriously considering that mothers are holding these books up as positive examples for their daughters, I added, "And her lack of talent is no excuse. She could have made the story better even with her lousy prose. It was easy."
"Easy for you."
"No, come on, these books practically wrote themselves. It was all right there -- first love, accepting yourself as-is, learning to grow up. Easiest themes ever. A ten year old could have gotten it right. The woman struck out while playing tee-ball."
My friend's position was more or less that Meyer's deficient style (such as her use of the term "liquid topaz") precluded her from creating a story with worthwhile themes; essentially, that being a "bad writer" encompassed storycraft. I maintained that being a "bad writer" and a "bad storyteller" were separate issues (both of which were the case in Twilight), and while Meyer's voice was undeniably awful, it was not a barrier to devising a poorly-written but still worthwhile plot.
So I decided to try it.
Husband: Um... you're going to what?
Me: Write a whole story in Meyer-voice! It'll be a real challenge!
Husband: ...didn't you just finish a story? You stared off into space for a month and threw up a lot. That looked like a challenge to me.
Me: Well, yes. But that was different. That was a plot challenge. This is a craft challenge!
Husband: ...I'm putting your doctor on speed dial.
Man, I was an idiot.
I think pretty much everything that screams "Twilight" has made it into this story. Absurdly long periods of Bella not knowing what's going on? Check. Filler spaces of melodramatic whining? Check. Backstory exposition disguised as one-sided dialogue? Check. Hit-you-over-the-head metaphors? Check. Unnecessary analogies to English literature? Check. Cheating at narration through insightful dream sequences? Check. Abrupt cliff-hangers? Check. Abuse of adverbs and commas? Check. Murmurs and mutters? Check. (I fell behind on my glower count. I am ashamed.) And yet in spite of these things -- and I assure you, it's in spite of -- there wound up being a semi-decent story with some exploration of basic themes and a not completely impossible level of character development.
Mind you, is it pretty? Oh, hell no. It's written in Meyer-voice, after all. I'm not a miracle worker. The point is that while Meyer-voice is bad, it's not a story-telling death blow; even with her writing style, New Moon could have been a better book. And I'm personally of the opinion that for all its backstory exposition and horrifying pacing and excess of murmurs, what's written here is still less obnoxious than Volterra.
I am capable of putting a lot of effort into my bitterness.
And you added imprinting why?
Short answer: I had to do something.
Long answer: A direct rewrite of New Moon without a divergent plot action would have a) been boring, and b) made canon compliance impossible.
Canon compliance was vital for this whole thing to work. To start from some point in the series and say, "Then Bella decides she doesn't really want to go to Italy!" would have been cheating; I'd be fiating changes into the characters and that would add unnecessary variables into the experiment. (I made a few exceptions for Meyer going OOC with her own creations. Example: why would Bella, who has been suicidally depressed for months, suddenly go into spasms of terror when she realizes Victoria is hunting her? Basic consistency would have her reacting with hopeless resignation. But I digress.) Therefore, a single divergent plot action rather than a divergent character action was necessary, since otherwise canon compliance would demand that the story remain the same. Imprinting was ideal. Quick, clean, obvious, and Meyer-esque.
I don't like imprinting. I don't. And not even because it's a creepy subversion of free will -- because it's a cheap deus ex machina that Meyer uses to avoid having to actually write about people falling in love. (Where does she do that? Nowhere. Bella and Edward leap from obsessive interest to star-crossed infatuation with no transition; Jacob's sweet crush becomes total devotion practically overnight. It's almost as if Meyer doesn't know how it feels to fall in love. There's a depressing thought.) But it can't be denied that imprinting is a very important plot point in the series, and that we were given almost nothing on the function or logistics of it. In spite of my distaste, I was curious about what it would look like if imprinting were shown without being argued (by the author) from any direction, good or bad. It was never my intention to make the reader like imprinting; I only wanted to make the reader think about it.
Then there was the siren call of characterization. Fighting to keep everyone in character through cliche and/or insane plots is my fanfic passion, and imprinting fit the bill. I couldn't see free-will Jacob as being okay with imprinting in this situation (Eclipse!Jacob is another matter entirely); I couldn't see fate-and-destiny Bella as being immediately weirded out by it. Then there was the possibility of putting Bella in a situation wherein she was compelled to think about someone other than herself... and I'd get to play with the wolfpack... and Victoria... well, I couldn't resist.
Did you have any success with this ridiculous quest?
Short answer: Kinda.
Long answer: Realistically, a lot of things fell by the wayside.
1. In the interest of readability, formatting changes had to be made -- paragraph sizes, for example. There's a difference between the way a story appears on a screen versus the written page. New Moon on LJ would be very hard to follow; The Movement of the Earth bound in hardback would be equally difficult. I also added mid-chapter breaks, which Meyer doesn't do. That was a combination of readability and simply having a limit to how much crappy filler I could write per chapter. (It should be noted, however, that I gave up my parenthetical asides. It was a huge sacrifice. Which I'm saying in a parenthetical aside. Ahem.)
2. I really, really wanted to fix the pacing... but I bit off more than I could chew with that one. I couldn't figure out how to manage the fix while maintaining canon continuity (that is, not just cutting out scenes 'cause I felt like it), working in the character development I wanted (that takes wordage), and keeping chapter sizes at relatively equal lengths (necessary for sensible updating). And so the story fluctuated wildly between my own tempo and the one set by Meyer, which severely damaged the flow and undermined my "tack this into the second half of New Moon and hopefully you won't notice someone else has started writing" effort. It will drive me crazy forever.
3. There were leaps of characterization that require quite a bit of backflipping to justify. In spite of my "Meyer went OOC with her own creations" approach, a rigidly Meyer-esque Bella would have meant no growth, so some cherry-picking had to happen. I'll argue canon basis for every character choice I made, but there's no getting around the fact that the preponderance of evidence points to Meyer's Bella Swan being a selfish, inconsiderate brat (though by far the worst of her behavior comes after the divergent point at the beginning of this fic). So I took what I liked and found wanking loopholes for the rest, which is really all you can do when writing J/B.
4. With the imprinting, I simply couldn't bring myself to do the in depth research necessary to achieve true canon compatibility, because that would have meant doing an in-depth Breaking Dawn analysis. My sanity was already hanging by a thread. If I incorporated the snip-snip-snip, well, I would've said "the hell with this" and deleted all my files in a huff. Luckily, Breaking Dawn doesn't even make Twilight sense. So I had some justification for chucking it.
5. Towards the end the Meyer-voice started to get away from me and I could never entirely bring it back. God help me, I started to like my little mutant lab rat of a story. By the last few chapters, during the times I had to make a choice between the plot and Meyer-voice, I started to lean slightly more on the side of the plot. I'm hoping that at least the transition was gradual and that no one noticed too much.
That being said, I think I largely succeeded in my three major goals for this fic:
1. Showing that there was an alternative character interpretation to Jacob being all sunshine and puppies about imprinting on Bella, and that Bella was in fact capable of growth if thrown into alternative circumstances wherein she had to focus on someone other than herself.
2. Maintaining canon compliance -- right down to the number of chapters. In the end, the removed portion of New Moon was somewhere around 74k words, and this fic is about 96k words... but there's also 22k words of additional characterization, I'd say, so I can live with that. Otherwise, I'm pretty sure there aren't any canon event mistakes. (Except for the cell phone, which I announced in the beginning, and the fact that I deleted a day of Bella's "hanging out in La Push" time for pacing purposes. In this, Bella goes to work on Monday; in the book, she works on Tuesday. Yes, it bugs me.)
3. Proving that there is no writing craft reason that Meyer couldn't have done this. Hell, she could have done it better when you consider that she would be writing in the voice that comes to her naturally (whereas I was practically having to figure out each word as I typed). She was capable of this. Meyer is a lousy writer and a lousy storyteller, and those are two different things. She shouldn't be cut any slack for the latter just because of the former. Her story is bad, and it didn't have to be just because she can't write. Those successes are what matter to me most, but the fails are still grating.
How's your sanity holding up?
Short answer: Ow.
Long answer: What began as a Pygmalion-esque personal challenge because an English lit journey into the heart of darkness.
Meyer sucks. This is not news -- I knew her prose sucked after I'd finished the first eight paragraphs of Twilight (it took me about 200 pages to understand her story-telling was no better) -- but the extent? In spite of all the awfulness I'd seen, I still didn't realize how much my eyes had simply skipped over until I made myself sit down and go line... by... line.
In all of my life, I have never read a more frustrating author. Her style is terrible. Her characters are hollow at best and disturbing at worst. Her id is so nakedly on display in certain parts that I have to avert my eyes. And yet -- I think by accident -- she stumbled into a common but still worthwhile concept: Growing Up Is Hard. And she ran the other way. I feel like if I can figure this out, if I can understand how in God's name a writer can so completely miss her own point, then I might achieve some sort of intellectual or spiritual enlightenment.
Moving on.
Writing in someone else's voice turned out to be a much bigger challenge than I had anticipated. Maybe this is not all Meyer's fault; maybe had I attempted to write like, say, Isabel Allende, I would've had similar issues. But Meyer's voice certainly didn't help. I've never had so much trouble making a story obey me. Usually I just conceptualize the basics of a plot (the beginning, the climax, and the big things I want to hit in the middle) then let the writing figure it out on its own. That didn't happen here. The characters weren't doing what I'd anticipated. I could not control the Meyer-voice. The Meyer-voice has a will of its own. (Like the Ring of Power, except not badass.)
Then... the migraines started. Followed by occasional weeping, throwing of items, and raving in the kitchen at the cats or my husband. (The baby I watch spit up on my copy of New Moon -- I think she was trying to help me out.) I became extremely whiny and melodramatic (more than usual, believe it or not). I laid face-down in bed for hours with my iPod on repeat to try and figure out where the fuck this story was taking me. I gave up food and started having soda-erotic dreams about drinking ginger ale. By the last few chapters my glands were swollen and I was running a constant lowgrade fever.
I used to think of Meyer as a talentless hack. Now I see her more as the boogeyman.
Needless to say, I am never doing anything like this again. (And if I tried, I think my husband would divorce me. Or have me locked up. Maybe both.) At the same time, it was all worth it -- because You. Guys. Rock. I have never had as much fun in comment threads as I did on this story. The analysis, the theories, the discussions... I've said it a hundred times, but I'm saying it again: this is the smartest fandom I have ever participated in. Hands down. I loved chatting about the themes that came up. (Yes, I find chatting about themes to be fun. I'm odd.) Here's the thing: we got cheated. We should have been able to discuss themes and theories about the actual saga, instead of 90% of the Twilight-related analysis being about the PTSD level of suckitude. Here, I feel like I finally got what Meyer should have given us, and that's all 'cause of you peeps. I am immensely grateful.
(I'd like to send out particular thanks to thankthatstar [who sat with me in a coffee shop as I was just starting to form this fic and didn't laugh me out of the room as I explained it in a caffeinated monologue] and likexaxdove [who messaged me back and forth as I was stuck on multiple sections, came up with ideas, and patted my head reassuringly]. I give you many snorgles.)
So... sequel?
Short answer: No.
Long answer: Fuck no.
I know this is going to make me very unpopular, but the story ended this way because it was a rewrite of New Moon and New Moon wasn't the end of the series. I wanted to leave it with a set up for a better and more interesting book than Eclipse, thus proving that Eclipse could indeed have been a better and more interesting book. But my experiment is over. If you want to know what happens next... you're all very clever. Imagine it any way you'd like. Go nuts. Sequels are overrated, anyway; they never live up to your expectations. (By the way, can I get a head count on who guessed that the story wouldn't have an 'ending'? I'm curious. Mostly, I want to know if you figured it out before I did.)
[Edited to add: Seriously, guys, I am so fucking tired I can't even tell you. I don't have it in me.]
And there you have it. The most self-indulgent author's note in the history of self-indulgent author's notes. I hope this fic makes a little more sense now, and that you liked it okay, whether for the experiment or for the story... maybe even both. Thanks again.
Additional note: mintenergy brought up a really good point in the first comment on LJ, and I want to fix what is probably the biggest clarity fail I've had in a fic with a lot of clarity fail. I didn't mean to imply that anyone is wrong or stupid for liking this story. I'm unbelievably gratified by the response I've gotten, and I'm actually quite proud of the parts that are mine (plot, theme, and character development). And I know the writing improved once I was freed of canon restraints, even though in a weird way that was a failure on my part. But all the compliments I've gotten? They've never been on the Meyer-esque bits, not once. (Well, aside from the "Good job on that line, I bet that hurt to write" stuff.) Believe me, I was watching, because that was the point at which I'd need to be locked up. I suck hard for implying I don't respect you guys, and for that I am really, really sorry.
Yet another note: LJ keeps eating the last bit of this entry and I don't know why. So if the last, like, third mysteriously vanishes... I don't know what to tell you.
I swear this is the last note: I seem to have underestimated the amount of genuine, heartfelt desire for a sequel, so my flippancy on the subject wasn't really appropriate. I'd like to explain my reasoning in a little more detail.
Updated 1/10/11: Oh. Dear. God. This is all Sam Uley's fault.
Author: audreyii_fic
Fandom: Twilight (Team Jacob)
Rating: T
Characters: Bella, Jacob, Charlie, and others (J/B)
Genre: Romance/Angst/Wolfpack!Humor
Warnings: Language, violence, and references to adult behavior
banner courtesy of lilabut
Summary: Jacob imprints on Bella. It changes things. A re-write of New Moon, beginning on page 242 in Chapter 10: "The Meadow." ( Link to the beginning.)
Author's Note:
[For the record: I nearly wrote a version of this to tag to the very beginning of the fic. Eventually I held off. My vanity cried bitter, bitter tears, but my sense of fic decorum refused to let me start a story with one of those "I know it sucks but read it anyway" wanks. So I swallowed my pride, settled for sanity updates, and, well... here we are. Better late than never.]
Author's Note
(or, The Movement of the Earth FAQ)
(or, "What the fuck was that?!")
Normally I don't do author's notes, but The Movement of the Earth really does require explanation. Otherwise, the only logical conclusion would be that I've suffered some sort of traumatic brain injury. I haven't. I just did this instead of, say, walking across hot coals or climbing Mount Everest -- both of which, in retrospect, would have been less painful.
For I have looked into the eye of the beast, ladies and gentlemen, and it is Stephenie Meyer's writing style.
Why in God's name did you write in Meyer-voice?
Short answer: To prove a point.
Long answer: So, mid-summer, I got into a conversation with a friend of mine who actually likes these books. As always, the discussion quickly degenerated into me yelling about Stephenie Meyer. A lot. In detail. As I paused to catch my breath after a long rant about the dangers of romanticizing stalking (always a favorite), my friend said, "You're a snob."
"Of course I am, but that's not the point."
"Look, I know Meyer can't write. Her prose is really awkward--"
"Is crap, you mean."
"--so it's not like she could have done any better. This is just silly trash and you take it way too seriously."
After another long, snotty rant about how I wasn't taking it too seriously considering that mothers are holding these books up as positive examples for their daughters, I added, "And her lack of talent is no excuse. She could have made the story better even with her lousy prose. It was easy."
"Easy for you."
"No, come on, these books practically wrote themselves. It was all right there -- first love, accepting yourself as-is, learning to grow up. Easiest themes ever. A ten year old could have gotten it right. The woman struck out while playing tee-ball."
My friend's position was more or less that Meyer's deficient style (such as her use of the term "liquid topaz") precluded her from creating a story with worthwhile themes; essentially, that being a "bad writer" encompassed storycraft. I maintained that being a "bad writer" and a "bad storyteller" were separate issues (both of which were the case in Twilight), and while Meyer's voice was undeniably awful, it was not a barrier to devising a poorly-written but still worthwhile plot.
So I decided to try it.
Husband: Um... you're going to what?
Me: Write a whole story in Meyer-voice! It'll be a real challenge!
Husband: ...didn't you just finish a story? You stared off into space for a month and threw up a lot. That looked like a challenge to me.
Me: Well, yes. But that was different. That was a plot challenge. This is a craft challenge!
Husband: ...I'm putting your doctor on speed dial.
Man, I was an idiot.
I think pretty much everything that screams "Twilight" has made it into this story. Absurdly long periods of Bella not knowing what's going on? Check. Filler spaces of melodramatic whining? Check. Backstory exposition disguised as one-sided dialogue? Check. Hit-you-over-the-head metaphors? Check. Unnecessary analogies to English literature? Check. Cheating at narration through insightful dream sequences? Check. Abrupt cliff-hangers? Check. Abuse of adverbs and commas? Check. Murmurs and mutters? Check. (I fell behind on my glower count. I am ashamed.) And yet in spite of these things -- and I assure you, it's in spite of -- there wound up being a semi-decent story with some exploration of basic themes and a not completely impossible level of character development.
Mind you, is it pretty? Oh, hell no. It's written in Meyer-voice, after all. I'm not a miracle worker. The point is that while Meyer-voice is bad, it's not a story-telling death blow; even with her writing style, New Moon could have been a better book. And I'm personally of the opinion that for all its backstory exposition and horrifying pacing and excess of murmurs, what's written here is still less obnoxious than Volterra.
I am capable of putting a lot of effort into my bitterness.
And you added imprinting why?
Short answer: I had to do something.
Long answer: A direct rewrite of New Moon without a divergent plot action would have a) been boring, and b) made canon compliance impossible.
Canon compliance was vital for this whole thing to work. To start from some point in the series and say, "Then Bella decides she doesn't really want to go to Italy!" would have been cheating; I'd be fiating changes into the characters and that would add unnecessary variables into the experiment. (I made a few exceptions for Meyer going OOC with her own creations. Example: why would Bella, who has been suicidally depressed for months, suddenly go into spasms of terror when she realizes Victoria is hunting her? Basic consistency would have her reacting with hopeless resignation. But I digress.) Therefore, a single divergent plot action rather than a divergent character action was necessary, since otherwise canon compliance would demand that the story remain the same. Imprinting was ideal. Quick, clean, obvious, and Meyer-esque.
I don't like imprinting. I don't. And not even because it's a creepy subversion of free will -- because it's a cheap deus ex machina that Meyer uses to avoid having to actually write about people falling in love. (Where does she do that? Nowhere. Bella and Edward leap from obsessive interest to star-crossed infatuation with no transition; Jacob's sweet crush becomes total devotion practically overnight. It's almost as if Meyer doesn't know how it feels to fall in love. There's a depressing thought.) But it can't be denied that imprinting is a very important plot point in the series, and that we were given almost nothing on the function or logistics of it. In spite of my distaste, I was curious about what it would look like if imprinting were shown without being argued (by the author) from any direction, good or bad. It was never my intention to make the reader like imprinting; I only wanted to make the reader think about it.
Then there was the siren call of characterization. Fighting to keep everyone in character through cliche and/or insane plots is my fanfic passion, and imprinting fit the bill. I couldn't see free-will Jacob as being okay with imprinting in this situation (Eclipse!Jacob is another matter entirely); I couldn't see fate-and-destiny Bella as being immediately weirded out by it. Then there was the possibility of putting Bella in a situation wherein she was compelled to think about someone other than herself... and I'd get to play with the wolfpack... and Victoria... well, I couldn't resist.
Did you have any success with this ridiculous quest?
Short answer: Kinda.
Long answer: Realistically, a lot of things fell by the wayside.
1. In the interest of readability, formatting changes had to be made -- paragraph sizes, for example. There's a difference between the way a story appears on a screen versus the written page. New Moon on LJ would be very hard to follow; The Movement of the Earth bound in hardback would be equally difficult. I also added mid-chapter breaks, which Meyer doesn't do. That was a combination of readability and simply having a limit to how much crappy filler I could write per chapter. (It should be noted, however, that I gave up my parenthetical asides. It was a huge sacrifice. Which I'm saying in a parenthetical aside. Ahem.)
2. I really, really wanted to fix the pacing... but I bit off more than I could chew with that one. I couldn't figure out how to manage the fix while maintaining canon continuity (that is, not just cutting out scenes 'cause I felt like it), working in the character development I wanted (that takes wordage), and keeping chapter sizes at relatively equal lengths (necessary for sensible updating). And so the story fluctuated wildly between my own tempo and the one set by Meyer, which severely damaged the flow and undermined my "tack this into the second half of New Moon and hopefully you won't notice someone else has started writing" effort. It will drive me crazy forever.
3. There were leaps of characterization that require quite a bit of backflipping to justify. In spite of my "Meyer went OOC with her own creations" approach, a rigidly Meyer-esque Bella would have meant no growth, so some cherry-picking had to happen. I'll argue canon basis for every character choice I made, but there's no getting around the fact that the preponderance of evidence points to Meyer's Bella Swan being a selfish, inconsiderate brat (though by far the worst of her behavior comes after the divergent point at the beginning of this fic). So I took what I liked and found wanking loopholes for the rest, which is really all you can do when writing J/B.
4. With the imprinting, I simply couldn't bring myself to do the in depth research necessary to achieve true canon compatibility, because that would have meant doing an in-depth Breaking Dawn analysis. My sanity was already hanging by a thread. If I incorporated the snip-snip-snip, well, I would've said "the hell with this" and deleted all my files in a huff. Luckily, Breaking Dawn doesn't even make Twilight sense. So I had some justification for chucking it.
5. Towards the end the Meyer-voice started to get away from me and I could never entirely bring it back. God help me, I started to like my little mutant lab rat of a story. By the last few chapters, during the times I had to make a choice between the plot and Meyer-voice, I started to lean slightly more on the side of the plot. I'm hoping that at least the transition was gradual and that no one noticed too much.
That being said, I think I largely succeeded in my three major goals for this fic:
1. Showing that there was an alternative character interpretation to Jacob being all sunshine and puppies about imprinting on Bella, and that Bella was in fact capable of growth if thrown into alternative circumstances wherein she had to focus on someone other than herself.
2. Maintaining canon compliance -- right down to the number of chapters. In the end, the removed portion of New Moon was somewhere around 74k words, and this fic is about 96k words... but there's also 22k words of additional characterization, I'd say, so I can live with that. Otherwise, I'm pretty sure there aren't any canon event mistakes. (Except for the cell phone, which I announced in the beginning, and the fact that I deleted a day of Bella's "hanging out in La Push" time for pacing purposes. In this, Bella goes to work on Monday; in the book, she works on Tuesday. Yes, it bugs me.)
3. Proving that there is no writing craft reason that Meyer couldn't have done this. Hell, she could have done it better when you consider that she would be writing in the voice that comes to her naturally (whereas I was practically having to figure out each word as I typed). She was capable of this. Meyer is a lousy writer and a lousy storyteller, and those are two different things. She shouldn't be cut any slack for the latter just because of the former. Her story is bad, and it didn't have to be just because she can't write. Those successes are what matter to me most, but the fails are still grating.
How's your sanity holding up?
Short answer: Ow.
Long answer: What began as a Pygmalion-esque personal challenge because an English lit journey into the heart of darkness.
Meyer sucks. This is not news -- I knew her prose sucked after I'd finished the first eight paragraphs of Twilight (it took me about 200 pages to understand her story-telling was no better) -- but the extent? In spite of all the awfulness I'd seen, I still didn't realize how much my eyes had simply skipped over until I made myself sit down and go line... by... line.
In all of my life, I have never read a more frustrating author. Her style is terrible. Her characters are hollow at best and disturbing at worst. Her id is so nakedly on display in certain parts that I have to avert my eyes. And yet -- I think by accident -- she stumbled into a common but still worthwhile concept: Growing Up Is Hard. And she ran the other way. I feel like if I can figure this out, if I can understand how in God's name a writer can so completely miss her own point, then I might achieve some sort of intellectual or spiritual enlightenment.
Moving on.
Writing in someone else's voice turned out to be a much bigger challenge than I had anticipated. Maybe this is not all Meyer's fault; maybe had I attempted to write like, say, Isabel Allende, I would've had similar issues. But Meyer's voice certainly didn't help. I've never had so much trouble making a story obey me. Usually I just conceptualize the basics of a plot (the beginning, the climax, and the big things I want to hit in the middle) then let the writing figure it out on its own. That didn't happen here. The characters weren't doing what I'd anticipated. I could not control the Meyer-voice. The Meyer-voice has a will of its own. (Like the Ring of Power, except not badass.)
Then... the migraines started. Followed by occasional weeping, throwing of items, and raving in the kitchen at the cats or my husband. (The baby I watch spit up on my copy of New Moon -- I think she was trying to help me out.) I became extremely whiny and melodramatic (more than usual, believe it or not). I laid face-down in bed for hours with my iPod on repeat to try and figure out where the fuck this story was taking me. I gave up food and started having soda-erotic dreams about drinking ginger ale. By the last few chapters my glands were swollen and I was running a constant lowgrade fever.
I used to think of Meyer as a talentless hack. Now I see her more as the boogeyman.
Needless to say, I am never doing anything like this again. (And if I tried, I think my husband would divorce me. Or have me locked up. Maybe both.) At the same time, it was all worth it -- because You. Guys. Rock. I have never had as much fun in comment threads as I did on this story. The analysis, the theories, the discussions... I've said it a hundred times, but I'm saying it again: this is the smartest fandom I have ever participated in. Hands down. I loved chatting about the themes that came up. (Yes, I find chatting about themes to be fun. I'm odd.) Here's the thing: we got cheated. We should have been able to discuss themes and theories about the actual saga, instead of 90% of the Twilight-related analysis being about the PTSD level of suckitude. Here, I feel like I finally got what Meyer should have given us, and that's all 'cause of you peeps. I am immensely grateful.
(I'd like to send out particular thanks to thankthatstar [who sat with me in a coffee shop as I was just starting to form this fic and didn't laugh me out of the room as I explained it in a caffeinated monologue] and likexaxdove [who messaged me back and forth as I was stuck on multiple sections, came up with ideas, and patted my head reassuringly]. I give you many snorgles.)
So... sequel?
Short answer: No.
Long answer: Fuck no.
I know this is going to make me very unpopular, but the story ended this way because it was a rewrite of New Moon and New Moon wasn't the end of the series. I wanted to leave it with a set up for a better and more interesting book than Eclipse, thus proving that Eclipse could indeed have been a better and more interesting book. But my experiment is over. If you want to know what happens next... you're all very clever. Imagine it any way you'd like. Go nuts. Sequels are overrated, anyway; they never live up to your expectations. (By the way, can I get a head count on who guessed that the story wouldn't have an 'ending'? I'm curious. Mostly, I want to know if you figured it out before I did.)
[Edited to add: Seriously, guys, I am so fucking tired I can't even tell you. I don't have it in me.]
And there you have it. The most self-indulgent author's note in the history of self-indulgent author's notes. I hope this fic makes a little more sense now, and that you liked it okay, whether for the experiment or for the story... maybe even both. Thanks again.
Additional note: mintenergy brought up a really good point in the first comment on LJ, and I want to fix what is probably the biggest clarity fail I've had in a fic with a lot of clarity fail. I didn't mean to imply that anyone is wrong or stupid for liking this story. I'm unbelievably gratified by the response I've gotten, and I'm actually quite proud of the parts that are mine (plot, theme, and character development). And I know the writing improved once I was freed of canon restraints, even though in a weird way that was a failure on my part. But all the compliments I've gotten? They've never been on the Meyer-esque bits, not once. (Well, aside from the "Good job on that line, I bet that hurt to write" stuff.) Believe me, I was watching, because that was the point at which I'd need to be locked up. I suck hard for implying I don't respect you guys, and for that I am really, really sorry.
Yet another note: LJ keeps eating the last bit of this entry and I don't know why. So if the last, like, third mysteriously vanishes... I don't know what to tell you.
I swear this is the last note: I seem to have underestimated the amount of genuine, heartfelt desire for a sequel, so my flippancy on the subject wasn't really appropriate. I'd like to explain my reasoning in a little more detail.
- I'm really, really tired. In spite of all my belly-aching, I really did enjoy writing this fic -- kind of like biathletes in the Olympics who puke their guts into the snow after they cross the finish line, but are still proud of themselves. My motivation for this story had a lot less to do with my hatred for Meyer than it did with being unable to resist the hardcore intellectual challenge that proving the difference between writing and storytelling presented. That's the kind of thing that doesn't present itself every day of the week. But I seriously underestimated how much it would take out of me (if it wasn't for my pride, I would have quit about halfway through). I can't do it again.
- I honestly don't know what happens next in the plot. I'm not holding out on you -- I don't. I don't have the slightest idea. If I tried to write a sequel, it would be for sequel's sake, and therefore would be forced and probably suck. (If any of you know how it goes, you have my full and complete permission to try.)
- While I don't know where the plot goes, I can tell you that I have a pretty vague sense of where the theme would take me... and it's nowhere pretty. The sequel would be dark. Very dark. A lot, lot, lot darker than I want to write or you want to read. Writing requires a certain amount of empathy with the characters, and if I take on that level of darkness I will lose my mind. I also don't want to take away the possibility of a happy ending from you guys (not that the sequel would necessarily have an unhappy ending -- I don't know the plot -- but it wouldn't be sunshine and puppies, I can promise you that). You really are better off picturing it yourselves.
- I know in my heart of hearts that it would require keeping Bella first person POV... which means keeping Meyer-voice. Not nearly to the extent that this fic was -- no more line lifting, no more canon constraints -- but Bella wouldn't suddenly have an entirely different internal monologue. She'd still sound like herself, and that's Meyer-voice. I can't do it anymore. The only even plausible alternative would be Jacob first person POV -- and I've been there, done that. The amount of crossover with DoW would be deeply unsatisfying to everyone, including myself.
- There won't be a Prom Night outtake. Again, I know in my heart of hearts that it would need to take place somewhere close to the center of the book, which means that at least in my own head I would need to have the plot of the story sketched out up until that point, and probably beyond. If I somehow found the plot that currently eludes me, that would set me up with a serious temptation to go ahead and write it -- which, for the reasons outlined above, would be a really bad idea. (And my husband would divorce me.) Also, I'm pretty sure it would be a virgin!sex scene. While it would be a new POV and PG-13 at best (therefore involving a lot of euphemisms and a not-too-scary fade to black), you can really only do virgin!sex once for a set of characters. I've done it already, and the crossover would, again, be deeply unsatisfying. (That being said, I'd like to point everyone toward gypseians crazy sweet take on prom night. Feel free to use it as head canon.)
Updated 1/10/11: Oh. Dear. God. This is all Sam Uley's fault.