Frequently Asked Questions: Midnight Sun

I didn’t really return to the story—I never actually left it. I didn’t decide to finish it now, this is just how long it took to write. It was a very slow process. It’s hard to describe how frustrating it is to write a very long book where you can’t create anything new, where everything is already scripted for you and you have no ability to go off that script. When I write, I’m fueled by creation. That’s what pulls me in and pushes me forward. And there wasn’t very much creation in this book. If I would have realized what a challenge it would be, I probably never would have started. 

Though there have been a lot of stops and restarts over the years, I was never away from the manuscript for very long. Several times I would hit a roadblock and quit to work on something more amicable, but one of the big boosts to the process came from a break. Life and Death, the gender-swapped version of Twilight I wrote for Twilight’s tenth anniversary, was unexpectedly beneficial to the Midnight Sun. Creating that version of the story let me get back to the characters in their purest form, just who they were as people, without any of the baggage from the movies or the fandoms. It made it easier for me to spend time with them again. 

When I did finally get to a point when I knew I would be able to finish, I worked to get it published as soon as possible. I knew that readers had been waiting for a long time.

At the time I was totally bewildered. I had no idea how the manuscript had gotten out or how to protect it from future leaks. The confusion over what had actually happened made it hard to know how to proceed. I was already dealing with more pressure and scrutiny than I’d ever imagined with the books and the movies being so popular (which was incredible, but also super overwhelming), and the leak was the proverbial straw on the camel’s back. So I pushed Midnight Sun away and was afraid to touch it for a while. Now, that experience seems so far away. It doesn’t upset me. I am sorry that it slowed down the process because it was hard on the readers who were waiting, but this book was going to take a long time regardless. It was just an incredibly slow novel to write. 

No. I do not plan to ever rewrite another novel from a different perspective. Writing Midnight Sun was a very frustrating and slow (so incredibly slow!) process, and I felt like my hands were always tied by the existing story. I only enjoy writing when I’m creating something new. So I will only write new things from now on.

Nothing is for everyone. And it doesn’t have to be. I never expected anyone to have a positive reaction to my writing, so I’m incredibly grateful to everyone who’s ever said anything nice about my books. 

I think it definitely will. Edward comes across as very confident and sure of himself in Twilight, when the whole time he was actually wracked with doubt and guilt. I think readers will be surprised by his level of constant anxiety. While in Twilight we got to see all of Bella’s second guessing and hesitation, from Edward’s point of view Bella comes across as very serene and self-possessed. We also get to see a lot of pieces of Bella that (in her total obsession with Edward) she found too boring to relate. We only get a few glimpses of Jacob from Edward’s perspective, but I think readers will be surprised by Edward’s reaction to him.

Edward is not human. That influences so much about his voice. Though he is trying hard to be as human as possible, his wants and needs, his instincts and priorities are all so different from a mortal’s. I think readers will be surprised by how much of a pessimist he is, and how he sees himself. Bella sees him as the romantic hero; Edward sees himself as the irredeemable villain. He doesn’t think he deserves a happy ending.

The pomegranate is a nod to the myth of Hades and Persephone. At several points in the story, Edward sees similarities between himself and Hades, and also Bella and Persephone. It’s one of the ways he processes what he’s going through, and also a way to recast himself again as the villain of the story. The image worked for me as a kind of overview of Edward’s headspace.

I knew the cover was going to be a darker image—the twisted pomegranate with the deep black background and red droplets that could be blood—so I wanted something soft and romantic on the art page. There’s a gentleness, an innocence, and a sweetness to the moment between Cupid and Psyche that felt aligned to Edward and Bella’s first kiss even though the mythology is unrelated. This image is also a nod to Bella’s point of view; she often compares Edward to a beautiful sculpture.

I don’t know if Midnight Sun will ever be adapted. There are some unique challenges with seeing the world from Edward’s perspective, most notably the fact that he is always hearing voices in his head. Personally, I think it would make more sense to film it for television so that there was time to really explore Edward’s world. But if we did ever adapt it, I don’t think there is any way we could use the same cast. Bella and Edward are seventeen—both Rob and Kristen are in their thirties now.

Edward is a very anxious and pessimistic person. While I was writing him, I had to be inside of his head and his emotions. So, I had to be both very anxious and very pessimistic all the time I was working on the story. It’s not a great way to feel. 

I’m not sure why Edward is compelling to others, but for me he’s compelling because he loves so absolutely, and because he is willing to write himself out of the story if that’s what’s best for everyone else. I’ve always been a sucker for a martyr. After writing him, the thing I dislike about him is his obsessive need to overthink everything. That’s not fun to write. But I can’t be too upset with him for this trait because he inherited it from me.

The #MeToo movement did not influence the writing of Midnight Sun because I was locked into the story I wrote in 2003. Really, I couldn’t change the script at all, so it is the just other half of that story, and it truly belongs in 2003, too. However, the #MeToo movement didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know about the way women are treated in this world, and Edward was in some ways an antidote to that knowledge. Though he definitely has flaws, he always sees Bella as a fully formed human being, never sees her as less than or lacking in value or as an object. Far from it! He’s always seen Bella as someone who is better and more important than he is, whose wants and needs trump his own, and he treats her accordingly. 

Actually, I don’t have to be very careful at all and it’s not difficult. This is just who I am, and so the words that come out of me reflect that. I don’t have to think about it. It’s automatic. Does it limit my stories? Maybe. But then, all writers are limited by what their brains hold. My brain holds what it holds, and I’m fine with that. 

I would love to continue the world of The Host, but so far I just haven’t been able to really connect with the sequel. Hopefully that changes someday, but I’ve never been good at writing something when I’m not feeling inspired by it.

The most important thing to know about future Twilight books is that they won’t appear for a very, very long time. This is a Midnight Sun-type timeline I’m speaking of. I’m not going to work on them now, I want to create something brand new (I have not decided exactly which project I want to tackle). And that takes time. When I get back to Twilight, it’s going to be a slow writing process. So this is not something to be looking forward to now. When it ever does finally appear, the story will revolve around the same characters, but Renesmee will be narrating, along with Leah Clearwater. The story will take place five or ten or fifteen years after the end of Breaking Dawn (the length of that space depends on when I get around to writing the book).

The readers never gave up. They always hoped I would one day finish. I thought, as the years passed, that they would stop wanting Midnight Sun, that they’d be over it, but that never happened. Because of that, I couldn’t give up either. And their response when I finally did finish the story was so overwhelmingly kind. It was more than I deserved.