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Balancing Writing and Life

     
    SH: It took me a long time to admit that I was a writer. I wouldn’t give myself permission to take the time—or to take it seriously—for a long, long time. But you started off in a different way. You already had three kids.
    SM: I did not call myself an author without making some kind of snide comment for at least two years after the book was sold.
    SH: Two years?
    SM: I had this really strong sense of paranoia—like it wasn’t real, that the whole deal was a practical joke—for a very long time. Because the contract negotiation took a good nine months, so for all of that time someone could have been stringing me along. It wasn’t until the check came—and didn’t bounce—that I really started to believe it.
    SH: Have people changed toward you—family, friends, and acquaintances?
    SM: You know, because when I started writing I had a bunch of little babies, we’ve moved a couple times. And you lose track of people, anyway, so I haven’t held on to many of my friends from before I started writing, just because of location.
    It’s the same way with my college roommates. We’re lucky if we get a phone call in once a year anymore. Then I’ve gotten enormously busy—I’ve changed—I don’t have as much time for social things. And I do think that I probably lost some friends just out of sheer neglect. Because I wasn’t going to neglect my kids.
And that summer with
Twilight
, I couldn’t do anything social. Why would I spend my time away from Forks when I could be there?
     
    SH: Yeah.
    SM: And that summer with
Twilight
, I couldn’t do anything social. Why would I spend my time away from Forks when I could be there? I’m getting better at balancing it, and I havesome really great friends now, which is nice. I have a lot of extended family, too, and they’ve all been very cool and supportive. But because there are so many of them, we haven’t been able to spend a lot of time together. I have seventy-five first cousins on one side of my family, so it’s not like we can get together and party very often. Most of us have several kids. My dad had a stepmom with five kids; his dad had seven…. It’s just a really big family. [Laughs] A big warm family, and nobody’s been uncool about it. It’s all been very nice.
    SH: I think family is good…. They knew you as an obnoxious young person. [Laughs]
    SM: Very obnoxious. Yeah, I’m just Stephenie to them.
    SH: I don’t think any success I’ve had has gotten to my head, because I can’t really take it seriously, or absorb it, anyway. But if I ever got close, I think my family would be there to tear me back down. [SM laughs] Which is what family’s for.
    SM: Yeah, my husband’s really good at keeping me humble, you know? Because he’s such a math person. If something’s not quantifiable—if it doesn’t fit into an equation—it can’t possibly be important. And so, to him, books are like:
Oh, you know… isn’t that nice? Little fairy stories.
To me, books are the whole world, and it’s such a different viewpoint. So that helps. And then, like you, I don’t trust this to last for a second.
    SH: Yeah.
    SM: And when negative things happen with my career, I kind of expect them—more than I expect the positive. It’s almostlike:
Yes, this is what I thought was going to happen! I saw this one coming!
Because I am a pessimist—raised in a long tradition of fine pessimists [SH laughs] who have never expected anything good for decades. So I come by it naturally. [Laughs] So with every book that comes out, I think:
Oh, this is it. This is the last time anybody’s going to want to publish me.
And maybe it’s healthier than thinking:
I am the best! I’m so amazing!
I don’t think that’s a healthy way to be. It’d probably be nice to be somewhere in the middle, but… [Laughs]
    SH: In some ways, I would love to have that armor—the wonderful author’s ego—that I am right, and I know what I’m doing, and I’m