Stephenie Meyer

If there was ever a more famous success story of someone who got published from "writing in their spare time" than Stephenie Meyer, I have yet to hear of it. For the uninitiated, Stephenie Meyer is the best-selling author of the Twilight Series which includes the books Twilight, New moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn. Two of these books have now been made into movies and they have each spent time on top the the New York Times Best-Sellers List. Prestigious as her name is now, however, she came from much humbler beginnings. I share this story so that those of you who think all great writers began like Mozart, who started composing at the tender age of 5, can think again.

Stephenie Meyer got her Bachelor's Degree in English from Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah. She got married, had three kids, and established a comfortable life as a stay-at-home mom and may have continued in this way and passed on into the oblivion of nameless faces if she hadn't one night in 2003, at the age of 30, written down an idea she got from a dream. The idea so intrigued her that she began writing--in her spare time. According to her online biography, she "mostly wrote at night, after the kids were asleep so that [she] could concentrate for longer than five minutes without being interrupted." Despite the plethra of demands made on her time by three young children--from making breakfast to changing diapers to driving kids to and from swimming lessons--she finished her book in three months.

Maybe this biography describes you, and maybe it doesn't. One for sure thing is that Stephenie Meyer was leading a perfectly ordinary life up until the day she received from a publishing house the announcement that her book had been chosen for revision and publication. There are thousands more possible Stephenie Meyers in the world--all you really need is a good idea, a little spare time, and a determination to finish.