by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell
JK Rowling (via Wikimedia Commons)
I hope you all had wonderful Thanksgivings. Ours was a joy, all of us together, including the three grandboys. I greeted them as they pulled up to the house. They tumbled out of the car like circus clowns. The two youngest held favorite toys. But the oldest, 10, had a thick paperback under his arm. It was Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. He’s about halfway through it. My heart sang.
Hard to believe that the Harry Potter series ended way back in 2007. JK Rowling did not publish another book until The Casual Vacancy in 2012. That novel was a stand-alone for adults, with the language and themes to prove it. Was Rowling worried about the abrupt change in genre? Not a bit. In an interview she put it this way:
Harry Potter truly liberated me in the sense that there’s only one reason to write, for me: If I genuinely have something I want to say and I want to publish it. I can pay my bills, you know, every day. I am grateful for that fact and aware of that fact. I don’t need to publish to make a living.
We both know what it takes to write a novel, we both know how much blood, sweat and tears go into writing a novel, I couldn’t put that amount of energy into something purely to say I need to prove I can write a book with swear words in it. So no, there was no nervousness – and again I don’t mean that arrogantly. I felt happy writing it, it was what I wanted to do.
I think we can all agree that JK Rowling can pay her bills. But what do you think of writing a novel as “blood, sweat and tears”? (Churchill actually said, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” But that was too long for a rock band, so it was shortened.)
It was not Hemingway who said writing was a matter of sitting down and the typewriter and bleeding (it was either Paul Gallico or Red Smith, or maybe both). But the sentiment is the same.
There does seem to be a small school of thought that says quality fiction knows not blood, sweat and tears. I don’t know about you, but I can tell a bloodless book within about 10 pages, if I haven’t set it aside by then.
I’ll add that you can’t just bleed on the page, as that only makes a stain. The sweat comes when shaping the blood into a narrative form readers can relate to. The tears indicate some frustration at times, and I contend if you don’t have those you aren’t pushing yourself beyond your current capacity. Of course, you’re not obligated to do that. But when asked what she aspires to as a writer, Rowling said, “To get better. I think you’re working and learning until you die. I can with my hand on my heart say I will never write for any reason other than I burningly wanted to write the book.”
There are also some who say you mustn’t let anyone else—editor or beta reader or spouse—opine about your story. Rowling doesn’t see it that way, and I daresay she’s sold a few books. Of her editor on The Casual Vacancy she said:
When he read the book, he singled out certain things about the book that I would have liked someone most to single out about it. I just knew I had the right person. It’s a very intangible thing. It’s like falling in professional love, isn’t it? And once you’ve got that, something clicks and you know you’re in safe hands.
We certainly made some cuts. I decided to move some things around, he made some great suggestions. The book is broadly what it was when I gave it to him. I didn’t change much but what we did change tightened it up a lot, which is what you want.
Rowling has, of course, gone on to write a hugely popular series of detective novels under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. They are the product of, what do you know? Work.
I often start with a kernel of an idea then work out how to get there. I plan and research a lot and know far more about the characters than actually ends up ever appearing in the books. I have colour coded spreadsheets, so I can keep a track of where I am going.
It is how I have always worked. It was the same for the Harry Potter novels. It’s well documented the level of detailed planning that went into those.
JK Rowling is what I call a real writer. She could sit back and sip gin gimlets and collect sea shells for the rest of her life, but she won’t. She can’t. She writes.
What about you? Do you bleed for your stories? It doesn’t have to be absolute agony, a la Proust. But shouldn’t you have some “skin in the game”? Shouldn’t you “open a vein”?
A few weeks ago I got a text from my daughter. It read: “How often do you think about the Roman Empire?”