Influence

A number of people have written about the Stephanie Meyer, Breaking Dawn phenomenon. Most eloquent among them are Justine Larbalestier and Diana Peterfreund. Does a writer "owe" her readers anything? I'm not sure, but I feel for Stephanie Meyer. Not merely because she's taking a beating for Breaking Dawn, the fourth and final installment of her Twilight Series, but because she must have felt the weight of all that expectation while she was writing it.I wonder if she had her readers' desires in mind, if she felt a responsibility to deliver the closure they needed. I wonder if she allowed their comments on her previous books to influence how she wrote. I'm thinking about all of this because, as I'm writing Cycler 2, reviews of Cycler 1 are beginning to trickle in. Even if I did allow myself to be influenced by those reviews, it's far too late in the process to change the story of Cycler 2, but I can't help but wonder if their comments are having some kind of effect. Already I've found myself rethinking the ethnicity of a minor background character perhaps, perhaps in response to one reviewer's comment about a minor Hispanic character in Cycler 1. I don't want to be influenced, but maybe I am.At any rate, whatever Stephanie Meyer's intentions were, she seems to have enraged rather than satisfy her fans. Who knows, maybe that was her intention. Just knowing one's readership can turn on you like that has got me spooked. And I don't even have a readership yet. I guess, in the end, all you can do is write what you believe and hope for the best. But if I ever write anything destined for the kind of critical brutality Breaking Dawn is receiving, I hope and pray that my Number One Reader and Filter of All Sucky Words (that's you, Woofy) catches it in time so I can start over.