If anyone other than myself actually reads this, I'm sure I'll be all kinds of hated on, but that's ok. Obviously I love the Twilight books, or else I wouldn't have a blog dedicated to all things Twilight. Most Twilight related blogs I've seen are dedicated to simply worshiping all things Twilight without question, remaining impartial and in general just providing breaking news related to the Twilight universe. I like the idea that mine has more of a personal touch. My blog = my opinions. We're all welcome to them.
Now before I was a Twilight fanatic, long before, I was a Stephen King fanatic. I've been collecting his books since I was 15 years old, own over 130 copies of them, and even once decorated my bedroom in a theme based on his "Dark Tower" series. So when I heard that the first author whose work spawned an obsession for me was talking smack about the second, my first thought was, "No Stephen, no, don't do this to me!" Then I looked into what exactly went down.
Here is what Stephen had to say on Stephanie and the Twilight series being compared to the work of J.K. Rowling (who I am not a fan of):
"Both Rowling and Meyer, they're speaking directly to young people... The real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can't write worth a darn. She's not very good.
People are attracted by the stories, by the pace and in the case of Stephenie Meyer, it's very clear that she's writing to a whole generation of girls and opening up kind of a safe joining of love and sex in those books. It's exciting and it's thrilling and it's not particularly threatening because it's not overtly sexual.
A lot of the physical side of it is conveyed in things like the vampire will touch her forearm or run a hand over skin, and she just flushes all hot and cold. And for girls, that's a shorthand for all the feelings that they're not ready to deal with yet."
To me, this is a case of the media and the Twihard community completely overreacting. Here's the thing, I have read the entire Twilight saga and listened to the audio books to the point where I have a lot of it memorized. However, I would never say that Stephanie Meyer is a genius WRITER. I think she's an amazing story teller, and the story she created is one that has captured the hearts of millions of people across the world. However King's comments are on her actual writing skills. Having read his book, "On Writing" which is about the art of writing I get what he's trying to say. There's nothing brilliant about Stephanie's actual technical writing skill. It's very basic, she repeats herself a LOT and at times could really use a thesaurus. Quite frankly I'm getting sick of reading about Edward's crooked smile, liquid topaz eyes, and her use of the words chagrin, wry, and hedged.
So yeah, people need to chill out. King himself once stated that when people accused him of pretty much writing smut, that the true mark of a talented author is in whether or not their books sell. His books sell. Stephanie's books sell. You can be a talented author without being a talented writer, in my oh so humble opinion.
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