It’s not a “weight battle” this time… but almost as bad. This is a tussle over talent!
Stephen King has weighed in on the success of J.K. Rowling and Stephenie Meyer. In case you haven’t heard, he thinks J.K. has talent and Stephanie can’t write worth a darn.
Ouch!
I know Stephenie has a horde of rabid fans, her very own publicist, amazing book sales and a huge cushion of money to soften these blows. I hope she also has a little mantra/mental tape which she runs, over and over saying: “I do not suck! I do not suck!” Because you can’t write when the tape in your head is saying: “I suck! I suck!” It’s just not conducive.
If a writer is lucky, he or she has a support team like my husband. My husband is a saint… he knows that a large part of my job is to put my heart and soul out there and get it back sliced and diced to bits. He’s my own personal corner man… he swoops in with an emotional stiptic pencil to staunch the blood loss and patch me up and send me back in the ring.
Many days his part is a lot nastier than mine. But he does it because he believes in me and knows that this is what I was meant to do. (God love him!)
As for SK vs SM… I have two things to say:
1. I defend SK’s right to state his opinion openly and without apology. He’s put his money where his mouth is and I’m pretty sure he’s not just speaking out of jealousy.
2. SM should gracefully ignore his comments, but be secretly pleased that he felt compelled to both read her work and speak up about it. That’s pretty huge when you think about it. If he didn’t care he could have read it, deemed it crap tossed it aside and not said another word about it. She knows… as most of us who have read the Twilight series, that she didn’t write it for HIM or his audience either.
