Midnight Sun
By Carley Marie Hollis
Monday 28th September 2009
Monday 28th September 2009
Unless you live in a hole in the ground chances are that you’re aware of the hype that surrounds the Twilight franchise. The title book was published in 2005 and has since become a New York Times Editors Choice, as well as being the bestselling book of 2008 according to USA Today, and the first film was released just before Christmas last year. The following three books will also be released on the big screen in the near future – filming for the second movie is already well underway. For four books the Twilight series had hundred of thousands of teens and young people across the globe fixated on the actions of Bella Swan, Jacob Black and most passionately, Edward Cullen – but even with this phenomenal success, there is a fly in the ointment for writer Stephenie Meyer. Diehard fans will know that Meyer planned the Twilight series to consist of five books, not four. The current books – Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn were to be supplemented by a rewriting of the first book of the series from Edward’s point of view. The companion novel was to be called Midnight Sun and Meyer had completed 12 chapters – detailing Edward’s first experience of Bella to just short of their first talk about their feelings – when a draft copy of what she had completed so far was accidently leaked onto the internet. Cue pandemonium in the Twilight Universe. For days Twlight Fansites debated whether the material circulating around the internet was merely a well written piece of fan-fiction, or whether Meyer had actually made around a quarter of her final book from the Twilight series available online. Eventually, Meyer revealed that the draft had been accidently emailed to a wrong source who had then posted it online; but this accident left Meyer feeling violated and vulnerable, and because of this, she decided to halt progression of the novel. This was in August 2008, and Meyer has since admitted that until she can overcome the anger that she felt when she found about the leak, she will be leaving Midnight Sun as an unfinished project.For almost all Twilight fans, this was a travesty – even after the end of Breaking Dawn many fans wanted more of Edward, Bella and co., and even Meyer admitted she hoped she would one day see Midnight Sun on the bookstore shelves next to the rest of the series. But while readers of the books wanted nothing but Meyer to continue writing, it must be asked how they would have felt if it were their own work which had been, for all intents and purposes, stolen. The writer of any novel holds the copyright to that writing – and as Meyer points out, that means she should have been the one to decide when and how that writing was made public. Here, we must accept the rights of an author, as creator and controller of her characters and plots always overrules the impatience and desires of her readers – it’s not just sad that Meyer’s work was stolen and posted online because it had halted the writing of Midnight Sun, it’s sad that someone has taken something which was not theirs to take. In doing so, that person has not only deprived all readers of the chance to read a finished, edited and polished version of Midnight Sun in return for a advanced preview which, in places, still had spelling errors, but they have also reduced Meyer’s own faith in her fans as loyal, loving people who wish to support her and all of her projects. Meyer has said that it will likely be two or more years before she feels she can return to her Midnight Sun manuscript. While we still have the next three Twilight movies will to look forward to, who’s to say that a new author won’t take the world by storm in the same way that Meyer has in that time? In a world where we expect instant gratification, will any of us still be interested in Meyer’s story by the time she eventually feels ready to finish it?
