Stephen King vs. Stephanie Meyer

So, yesterday, there was a slightly 'big' controversy in the writing world. I say 'big' because depending on how much you care about either author involved, it may have slipped by unnoticed. However, if you're like me and you like to read, there's very little chance you haven't heard of either Stephen King or Stephanie Meyer.

Now, for those of you new to my blog, it's no secret that I dislike the writings of Stephanie Meyer immensely. Ok, so dislike might not be a strong enough word based on what I've written in the past. I think it's pretty obvious that I think the Twilight books are badly written rip-offs of much better author's works. I've been nice in giving Meyer respect for at least getting young people to read. Although now I might have to amend even that nicety a little because, frankly, the obsessee's of Twilight aren't exactly going out to the library or Borders and looking for other books. They're just rereading all of Meyers' books over and over again. There comes a point where that stops being reading and just starts being scary.

In case you haven't heard of Stephanie Meyer, the Twilight series is a four-part series of novels about a perfect boy who turns out to be a vampire and a very normal girl who inexplicably becomes the desire of the vampire. The series encompasses themes such as being so in love, you're willing to kill yourself because your love left you. Also, a theme that love conquers all, especially life because Bella, the heroine, spends three and a half books pining for Edward, our hero, to kill her so she can join him in eternity. She's seventeen. She has a loving family. Yet she still wants to turn herself into a bloodsucking beauty just so she can stay with Edward. Then she eventually marries the vampire, has his baby in an extremely gruesome manner and gets turned into a vampire because it was the only way to save her life. Oh, also, Bella's best friend (who started out as a werewolf but then became a Shapeshifter because Meyer couldn't make up her mind) is in love with Bella so there's a love triangle going on. Except when Bella and Edward's baby is born, the terribly-named Renesme, Jacob falls in love with baby because that's what shapeshifters/werewolves do- they imprint on a person, no matter how old, and mate for life.

Ok, so that might be a teensy bit editorialized but, I promise, the plotlines in the paragraph above are all true. Every last one of them.

Anyway, so that's a little about Ms. Meyer. Now, about Stephen King. Yesterday, a quote was published from him regarding Stephanie Meyer for an interview he did with USA Today:

"The real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can't write worth a darn," he said. "She's not very good."

Naturally, Meyer fans are in an uproar. The mud is flying, people are accusing Stephen King of being the pot to Meyers' kettle, i.e he can't write either.

I beg to differ. Ok, so Stephen King's books of late haven't been particularly gripping. Ok, so he said he was going to retire a couple of times but...hasn't. And yes, his earlier books were WAY better than his later ones (which may or may not have been linked to his alcohol/substance abuse problems from back in the day.) I'm not saying that he was a better writer when he was drunk or high but....well....those books were better. However, Stephen King has some amazing credits to his name. He can also write and he can write well.

Personally, I can't even fathom how people can even dare say that King can't write any better than Meyer. To say so is almost a crime. Whether you like horror or fantasy or not, doesn't mean that Stephen King can't spin an amazing tale. When he wants to, King's writing can be beautiful and poetic. His characters are three dimensional and compelling. He can make you laugh with a simple phrase such as "he stared at him as though he'd just suggested he use the Arc of the Covenant as a pay toilet". That may be slightly misquoted but it's one of my all time favourite literary quotes. I think it might be from It but I actually don't know. All I know is that it stuck with me.

I'm not saying that Stephen King is perfect. After all, my mother, who used to read his books and enjoy them can no longer read his works because he was arrogant enough to write himself into the last of his Dark Tower series. I admit, this was a gutsy move. I actually didn't mind that at all, I had more of an issue with the syrupy, sugary ending he gave his Susannah character. With that, he let me down, proving that even the toughest, most brutal writers can give in to sentiment. Stephen King: if you're going to kill two of my favourite characters from the Dark Tower books, do not DARE to try to bring them back for a happy ending. I mourned them both and was ok with that. Bringing them back was cheating and it should never have happened.

Yet if you look at Stephen King's record vs. Stephanie Meyer, I don't think anyone can question the fact that King is the much better of the two authors. For one thing, have you looked at his sales figures? Secondly, have you read his books? My favourite is still Black House which was a joint effort with Peter Straub but, as a King fan, I can see his writing and his influence on the book and it's brilliant. The Waste Lands, the third of the Dark Tower series, is one of the best fantasy books ever written, in my opinion.

Yet it's not a question of who's the better writer. That's obvious. Also, I think King was absolutely right to declare J.K. Rowling a far superior writer to Meyer because she is. I am sick to death of the Twilight vs. Harry Potter debate. It's like comparing Star Wars to Starship Troopers. They might both be entertaining but one is a cinematic classic...the other is a piece of crap that might entertain but at the end of the day, has giant bugs and some terrible acting.

I suppose I'm just happy that, once again, Stephen King has seconded an opinion I've had for a while. He did that with Dan Brown's DaVinci Code, calling it a piece of "dreck". I'd been calling it that for ages. It's nice to have someone who usually writes rather well not afraid to say what he thinks instead of patting Stephanie Meyer on the head and saying "good girl" instead of saying "you're a bad writer who ripped off Anne Rice."

And, as a writer, it's also nice to feel validated. I used to wonder how Stephanie Meyer got past the rejection letters since her writing is so....mediocre. Then I found out a friend of her's was a writer and hooked her up with an agent. Some of us aren't that lucky. We keep writing and our writing improves but we have no published friends.

Yet at least there are published authors like Stephen King to stand up for good writing until we can get our start. And, for that, I say thank you, Mr. King. I'll even consider reading some of your newer books again.

Happy Thursday.

In which I Tried to be Nice but Failed Miserably (Sorry, Stephanie Meyer)

I promise I'm going to try to hold back from complaining about anything related to Twilight, Stephanie Meyer or anything resembling syrupy, unoriginal, annoying vampire fiction. At least for today. I think I need to read something else that's really bad; then again after I read The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown that sent me on a rant that still isn't quite over, even though it's been several years since I read it. To be fair though, Angels and Demons, the prequel to The Davinci Code. was much worse. I mean, that one had the self-proclaimed 'Harrison Ford in Tweed' hero, Robert Langdon falling from a high flying helicopter and he escaped with nary a bruise.

Here's a confession though: Sometimes I read Dan Brown's fiction because it's so bad, I relish it. There's still a couple of his books I haven't read and I'd like to think I can restrain myself. It shouldn't be too hard. After all the last one I read was so silly, I can't believe it got published. It was something like Digital Fortress or something. There's a couple of them that sound the same. All I know is that he started writing the book with a female heroine who was supposed to be smart but she ended up getting pushed to the sidelines because the men around her were much smarter. It was bad. Though the book had one of my all-time favourite "Don't Write Like This" phrases: "Her olive gaze was keen." To this day, I'm not quite sure whether he meant she had green eyes that turned everything around her green and keen or whether she had mysteriously replaced her eyeballs with pimento stuffed olives. Both of them make for an interesting visual, you have to admit.

Other than the Strictly Research Harlequin books I read, I haven't read anything bad since Breaking Dawn. I've read good books. I don't know if that's because I've just picked good books since then or because that book was so atrocious that everything else pales in comparison.

At the moment, I'm reading a popular fiction book: The Time Traveler's Wife. I wasn't sure about it at first. The time traveling was a bit confusing in the beginning but then it evened out and it got interesting. I also wasn't sure about it because I was afraid it was going to be some silly, too fictional to be real love story. Not that there's anything thing wrong with a love story but if the lovers in question don't at least have a couple of scenes where they're ready to throw knives at one another, it's not realistic to me. Then again, I am the person who couldn't get through Wuthering Heights. Talk about a couple of drips. They actually probably would have thrown knives at each other, come to mention it. Most of the time, it seemed like that hated each other. I think it was one of those grand passions that are so famous in fiction. Unfortunately, they were both so despicable, I really wished they'd both just ride off into the moors and get eaten by the Blair Witch or something.

Um, yeah, Captain Monkeypants may still be feeling a little snarky. Sorry about that.

Back to The Time Traveler's Wife. It was a loaner from a good friend who insisted I finish it. So I perservered even though I don't do well with the concept of time travel. To me, it's the same level of confusion as concentrating while trying to brush my hair in the mirror. I'm not terribly good at the whole reverse image thing. I get befuddled. Time travel befuddles me. All that paradoxical stuff in which future people can travel back and talk to past people but not be seen by their present people or whatever...it's all rather perplexing. It's one of those things I'd rather be perplexed by rather than have someone try to explain it. Like all things I don't understand, it's magic. That's good enough for me.

But this book isn't confusing now I'm into it. I'm intrigued. I'm almost done and I think I might have figured out how it's going to end and if I'm right, I don't think I'm going to like it but I might love it. I confess, sometimes I'm a skipper. This means that I cheat, I skip to the end of a book because I can't wait to see what happens. I'm trying to be better about that lately so I'm not skipping to the end of this book.

The reason I might not like it is that it's not going to be a completely happy ending. I might love it because if I'm right, it means the author did a brilliant thing in placing an almost throwaway scene strategically towards the beginning of the book and I almost didn't think anything of it. I love it when that happens. I love that I'd have to read the second time to see if knowing the ending spoils the book. I'm weird like that, I suppose but I love to reread a good book, particularly one with an excellent ending.

Endings are hard for writers. There are some writers I enjoy who cannot write a decent ending to save their life. Stephen King comes to mind. He falls into the trap of building it up so much that the ending is almost a complete letdown because there's nowhere to go. I think It is the best example of that. I loved that book until the end. The flashbacks were clever, the story built up, it was creepy and scary and then when you found out that the It in question was really just a glorified giant spider, it was a bit of a letdown. Pennywise the Clown was WAY creepier. Dean Koontz is also pretty bad at endings. I think horror writers have it hardest because creating the horror is much easier than explaining it. After all, it's really just a variation on the old saying that there's power in a name. There's a power in knowing in a horror novel. Once you know what the Big Creepy is, it's far less creepy. It becomes an object that can be confronted because it is known. It's the not knowing that's the scariest thing of all.

Stephen King's son released a novel fairly recently. His name is Joe Hill and the novel is Heart Shaped Box. For a first time novel, it was actually quite a good read. It definitely had some moments of creepiness. When he released it, he didn't publicize who he was but one look at his photo on the back cover and it was pretty obvious to anyone who spent vast amounts of their teenage years reading Stephen King novels that the two were related. They look extremely alike. It wasn't a mystery. Joe has a lot of similarities in his writing to the earlier Stephen King. I can't say it was the best horror novel I read but as a ghost story, it's definitely worth reading. But I will admit, the ending of that wasn't anything I really remember. I remember the hero and his unlikely love. I remember the ghost. I remember how the ghost came to being and I remember being very sad for the dogs. I just don't remember the ending very well. That's probably not a good sign.

I won't lie and say I'm great at endings either. They're hard. Really hard. The more you write the characters and the longer you spend with them, the harder it is. I've written eight novels now. Of those eight, there are five that are a series. I spent a couple of years with the main characters, my boys as I like to refer to them: John, Michael and David. They're all wonderful, even when they're evil and they do bad things. I killed one of them. Actually, no, I killed two of them. That was hard. I'd say that was a spoiler because nothing is ever what it seems, especially when I'm making up the details.

But the hardest part was writing the last book in the series and realizing that their story was done. Though I knew how it would end, getting there took a long time. I've rewritten the ending several times and I don't think I'm 100% happy with it. It needs to be edited more. It needs to be tidied up. It needs to be tighter. But I couldn't quite let go of them because I was afraid that would be it. Those boys would leave me and I'd have to move on.

Those boys haven't left me though. They're in my head all the time. I call it my literary schitzophrenia. They've been joined by a couple of other characters who've stuck with me but whose ending I had no trouble with. I usually don't start to write towards the ending until I know what it will be. Sometimes I know the ending before I know the beginning. Other times, I think I know the end but my characters tell me otherwise and I'm at their mercy.

I'd love to share my books with the world. I've dabbled with query letters but I haven't really jumped in feet first. I want those boys I wrote to get out into the world. I want them to grab the readers the way they grabbed me, their tale of good and evil, friendship and brotherhood and the sometimes brutal way they have to act to carry out their purpose in life. And I love how they take that purpose in life and stomp all over it.

But when I think about jumping in feet first, I think about poor Stephanie Meyer. She might be rich but there are always going to be people like me, brutally stomping on the ending to her Twilight saga and ranting about what a pile of crap it is. I'd like to think she was terrified to let the world read that, that it meant so much to her she almost didn't want to publish it because her heart was in that novel. But I've read it and as brutal as it sounds, there is no heart in there. To me, Breaking Dawn is just the self-indulgent whim of a writer who stopped remembering to let her characters tell the story and forced them into submission so she could write the ending she'd always visualized instead of the one that belonged to the book.

So, though I planned on finishing The Time Traveler's Wife tomorrow, I think I may stretch it out. The ending isn't too far off now and if it's anything like the rest of the book, it's going to make me think. Against my expectations, I like the characters and I like how unconventional they are. I especially like that though the time traveler and his wife are in love, they fight and argue like real people. I like thinking I know how it's going to end but knowing I might be wrong. I just hope that I'm not wrong about how good it's going to be. Endings are hard, in every sense of the word. But sometimes they can be as good as a beginning when it leaves you with a hope, a thought and a memory of how much it meant to have it, even for a little while. It's true for writing and it's true for life. It's always hard to say goodbye.

On that note, it is time for my ending for now. I know I said I'd be nice and not rant about Stephanie Meyer but, well, like I said, I can't always plan for how I write. It just happens. And I said I'd try. Clearly even the best of intentions go awry sometimes. I'll try to read something else awful so I can move on. Recommendations are greatly appreciated.

Happy Thursday, everyone.