30 Days of Truth – Day 14

A hero that has let you down.

Stephen King. Here me out.

A while back I got really into Stephen King books. I love the way he writes, so I was grabbing whatever I could find at yard sales and flea markets, getting the new stuff for Christmas and birthday presents. I read tons of his stuff, horror and otherwise. This binge of King’s work came at a time when I hadn’t really written anything in a long time, and reading his work got me moving again. He’s part of the reason I started writing about zombies. So, in that way, he’s a bit of a hero to me.

But here’s the thing…I don’t tend to follow the lives of, well…anyone in media. So normally I wouldn’t know a damn thing about King other than that he writes some pretty good books. But then, one day, I stumbled across a quote online from King, bashing the hell out of Stephanie Meyer. For those who might not know (to which even I have to wonder if you’re living under a rock), she’s the one who created Twilight, with all the…sparkly vampires and whatnot. When I saw the quote I looked a little deeper and found several quotes all of King just tearing into Meyer. He says she’s an awful writer, that Twilight is utter rubbish, and so on and so on.

Now this is a bit of a mixed opinion that is going to sound ridiculous:

I agree that Stephanie Meyer is an absolutely terrible writer.

I loved the Twilight books.

I’ll give you a few moments to put that together, as I know it doesn’t make any sense. But the thing is, you can be an awful writer and still make people happy. I cringe at the writing in Twilight. As a writer myself, some of the things Meyer puts to paper make me want to gag. But I enjoyed the story for the same reason that some people are obsessed with B-movies. Yeah, it’s awful, but it’s also fun.

This is the reason that King is a bit of a “fallen” hero to me now. Logically I know lots of celebrities probably do/say similar things, but to hear him bash Meyer relentlessly bothers me because even if she isn’t very good at the essentials, she still created a story that made lots of people happy, and that’s all that really matters. If you try hard enough you can poke lots of vicious holes in Harry Potter (*cough*timeturner*cough*), but King praises Rowling because he likes her writing.

I guess what it comes down to is that I’m not a fan of bullies, and that’s what King comes off as here, at least in my opinion. What he says about Meyer’s work makes me wonder what he would say about Harlequin romances, which have made endless amounts of money and made millions of women happy, even though many of them are beyond ridiculous.

And this entry has gotten way too long, so I’m just going to leave it at that.