Tuesday, August 09, 2016

Harry Potter and the Cursed Writer

A small look into the brilliant mind of JK Rowling.
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is the best selling book of 2016. Some love it, others feel betrayed, but what does it say about writers?

(Warning: Mild spoilers ahead! Stop reading if  you don't want to know anything.)

Okay, the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child plot revolves around a time-turner, the creation of alternate universes, and things happening to characters we love that differ from the timeline in the first seven books.

You may not know this, but every author has a time-turner. As we write, there are thousands of different directions we can take our stories. When we delete, we change our fictional character's lives. I have written three very different "first drafts" for the second book in my series. I mourn story lines and characters I had to leave behind. Hopefully readers will never discover what "could" have been, but I will never forget. For me, all of my stories feel like they are full of alternate universes, things that once happened, but are now gone forever.

Now, I don't know how much of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child came from ideas that were once part of the original series and were rejected for one reason or another. Maybe none of it. But it is a clever look into the writing process and the emotional turmoil most of us authors go through.

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