Ye Olde Caves of Nottingham by Sharon Ledwith

Today I am thrilled to welcome to the blog Sharon Ledwith, author of The Last Timekeepers and the Arch of Atlantis from Euterpe Books, the YA/MG imprint of Musa Publishing.  Sharon is here with us today to celebrate Euterpe's Back to School Extravaganza week.

In getting to know Sharon, I've discovered that she's a writer after my own heart, sharing my love of research and a draw to the older myths and folklore.  I love the fascinating information she gleaned on the caves of Nottingham, perhaps because there's some striking similarities between them and the caves and underground cities of Cappadocia, Turkey, that I'm using in one of my stories.

So, please welcome Sharon to the blog, and I hope you enjoy learning more about this hidden gem of Nottingham's history.

YE OLDE CAVES OF NOTTINGHAM

In my middle-grade/young adult time travel book, TheLast Timekeepers and the Arch of Atlantis, my feisty group of adolescent characters’ first mission lands them in England in 1214 where they must find a young Robin Hood and his merry band of teens. Legend has it that one of Robin Hood’s haunts (besides the famous Sherwood Forest) was the village of Nottingham.

When I undertook the meticulous research needed to craft my novel, I came across an interesting fact about Nottingham I had never known: beneath the houses, shops, and offices of Nottingham are hundreds of caves. My eyes bugged and imagination went into overdrive, while I gathered fact after fact about the Nottingham caves. In truth, it was a little like panning for gold nuggets.

The end result of the information I gleaned is woven into my story, but I’d like to share some other interesting facts about these not-so-famous caves:

• The earliest written record of Nottingham’s caves comes from a Welsh monk called Asser who when writing about Nottingham in 868 referred to the town as Tig Guocobauc, meaning house or place of caves in British. 
• Nottingham has more man-made caves than anywhere else in Britain.
• The exposed cliff of the sandstone outcrop made this an obvious place for the early citizens of Nottingham to make their home. The occupants of these cave houses were generally poor and the caves were known as pauper holes.   
•  Each cave is unique and created for a specific purpose; some even have elaborate carvings, pillars and staircases.  
• The softness of Nottingham’s sandstone makes it easy to excavate with hand tools, and the structural stability means that excavated caves are safe to use, even with buildings above them.
•  Throughout the medieval period Nottingham continued to grow and prosper, becoming a centre for trades such as wool manufacture, tanning, malting, alabaster carving and pottery production.  A number of these activities were undertaken in Nottingham’s caves.
•  Sandstone caves maintain a constant temperature of around 14 degrees Celsius/ 57.2 Fahrenheit and therefore made excellent cellars for the storage of ale.  
• At the start of the Second World War new caves were excavated and old ones reused to act as Air Raid shelters. 

Believe it or not, few people in Nottingham are aware of this labyrinth, and fewer still have visited them. Unfortunately, in these modern times, a significant number of caves have been filled in with cement or bricked up, with others disappearing through natural collapse. There’s a special project underway called the Nottingham Caves Survey which hopes to survey and document all the caves under Nottingham, and bring awareness to this unique historical resource. I invite you to take a virtual tour if you dare: http://nottinghamcavessurvey.org.uk/

Susan here -- Thanks Sharon so much for sharing some of your research with us.

To celebrate our Back to School Extravaganza, Euterpe Books is giving away one copy of Sharon's ebook, plus Sharon has offered a prize package that includes a signed paperback novel of The Last Timekeepers and the Arch of Atlantis, a trading card, two wristbands (adult and youth size), and an Ionic Power wrist watch.  To enter, all you need to do is comment before Sunday evening.  I'll draw a winner for the book and the prize package on Sunday night (9/16) at 7 pm EST Extended to Monday night (9/17) at 10 pm EST!

We'd love to hear about your research.  What's some interesting tidbits you've uncovered researching for a story?  Or, has your research ever inspired you into a whole new story than what you had planned?

When 13-year-old Amanda Sault and her annoying classmates are caught in a food fight at school, they're given a choice: suspension or yard duty. The decision is a no-brainer. Their two-week crash course in landscaping leads to the discovery of a weathered stone arch in the overgrown back yard. The arch isn't a forgotten lawn ornament but an ancient time portal from the lost continent of Atlantis.

Chosen by an Atlantean Magus to be Timekeepers--legendary time travelers sworn to keep history safe from the evil Belial--Amanda and her classmates are sent on an adventure of a lifetime. Can they find the young Robin Hood and his merry band of teens? If they don't, then history itself may be turned upside down.

Bio:

Sharon Ledwith is the author of the middle-grade/YA time travel series, THE LAST TIMEKEEPERS, available through Musa Publishing. When not writing, researching, or revising, she enjoys reading, yoga, kayaking, time with family and friends, and single malt scotch. Sharon lives in the wilds of Muskoka in Central Ontario, Canada, with her hubby, a water-logged yellow Labrador and moody calico cat.

Sharon’s Website

Sharon’s Blog

Twitter

Guest Post - Martina Boone on World Building

I'd like to introduce you to our fabulous guest blogger today... but Martina Boone needs no introduction.  If you're a writer and online enough to be reading my blog, then I'm betting there's very few of you who are not already fans of Martina's.  Martina, (along with the awesome Lisa Gail Green, one of this blog's followers), runs Adventures in YA & Children's Publishing, a blog that serves the writing community brilliantly.

But beyond Martina's resourceful blog and her supportive Twitter feed, I'd like to introduce you to Martina the incredibly talented writer and my insightful and caring critique partner (yes, I'm so lucky!).  Having been a fan of Martina's online world, I got to know the real person when I read one of her manuscripts -- and was blown away.  I will tell you, honestly, a comment I gave her after reading her story -- "I cannot wait until this gets published so I can create a fan blog for it!"

Seriously.  It's that good.  And I do not say this lightly when I say that Martina reminds me of JK Rowling.  She knows how to work with mythology, complex themes, and subtext (oh-my-god SUBTEXT!) to tell a fun and compelling story.

I was thrilled when Martina's lovely short story, "Bringing Lula Home," was chosen along with mine to be included in BelleBooks' newest collection of Southern-style short stories, Sweeter Than Tea, that released this week.  You'll absolutely love Martina's story of reconciliation, long-hidden family secrets, and a woman's triumph in reclaiming the art buried in her own heart.

So, please, join with me today in welcoming Martina as she shares her wisdom on creating an intriguing, full world for your characters to inhabit.  (And believe me, can Martina world-build).

Also, one lucky commenter will receive a copy of Sweeter Than Tea.  So, make your voices heard!

World-building: The Hooks of Magic in Your Book

By Martina Boone

One of the things that J.K. Rowling does best with her Harry Potter books is the way that she twists and incorporates classic mythology to create something new. Myths have undoubted power. Tapping into them is a great way to add heart and depth to a modern story because, over time, the power of myth has burned into the human dna. 

As Joseph Campbell, perhaps the best known writer on the subject of mythology, put it:

"Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths."

When we write at our best and most enduring, I am convinced, we are writing our own personal spin on a myth. The deeper the myth and the more we embellish it, the truer it becomes. And at its core, fiction is truth. Unless we make a story true, we cannot make it readable.

So what is truth in fiction? Emotion. That is the real power of myth: honest emotion shown in a way that others can understand and relate to their own experiences.

We all know there are only a handful of stories in the world. What sets them apart are:

• the craft and the artistry with which they are told
• the timing in which they are delivered, and
• the characters that bring them to life.

To paraphrase what Susan said in her wonderful guest post this week on the Adventures in YA Publishing blog, the truth is in the details. That is why we have to spend time on world-building. Whether we are writing fantasy or southern literature, paranormal or mystery, our characters must inhabit complete worlds populated by other round characters. They must all interact in interesting locations brought to life by unique and identifiable music, food, weather, clothing—all the trappings of actual life. In order to create a living, breathing book, we have to also create community, a place where readers want to move in and stay a while.

Here is another quote from Joseph Campbell:

"I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.” 

What does that really mean? What is the experience of being alive in a book? It is the experience of what it means to be the characters in that book. It means that we aren't simply showing the action. We are making the reader experience it along with the characters. To do so, we invoke what the character's see, smell, hear, taste, touch, feel.  And we make that unique. That's what Jo Rowling does best. She makes her world and her stories unique but universal at the same time. She taps into the power of myth to reach the deepest truth and build the truest fictional world.

Think about some of her most powerful images:

• The boy with the thunderbolt on his forehead. Thanks to mythology, we all equate the thunderbolt with the strongest gods.
• The boy in the closet under the stairs. As a symbol, this has great power. Not only is he metaphorically "in the closet" – with his true self hidden, but he is at the basest part of the house, at the very bottom with nowhere to go but up. He lives in the dark, he lives as a servant. She's told us all of that in one sentence: "Harry was used to spiders, because the cupboard under the stairs was full of them, and that was where he slept."

In her HARRY POTTER FOR WRITERS book, Susan Sipal does a brilliant job likening Harry Potter to the Hero's Journey story structure, and that is, of course, the classic mythic structure. As Susan put it, "To put it simply--the Hero’s Journey is the story plot which has lasted the longest because it strikes a basic, universal human chord of truth. Thus the Hero’s Journey is the archetypal outline for a blockbuster plot."

I couldn't agree more. I've based my own plot complications worksheet on the turning points in the Hero's Journey, and I love using that as a basis for getting my thoughts in order. But the Hero's Journey structure is only the beginning. It gives us the framework within which to weave our stories, and we do that by creating the most meaningful, interesting details we can possibly come up with and melding them together to make a new and vivid pattern.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that a kick-ass plot and some bits of mythology or symbolism are going to turn your opus into the next HARRY POTTER. What makes J.K. Rowling (and every other bestselling author) so successful is the specificity of the world-building. Tap into this in your own work by using hooks.

Susan identified "the hook" as another aspect of Rowling's success. She applied it to character:

"One technique JKR utilizes to make each individual stand out unique from the others is to give each character a hook; a description, personality trait, or association which defines him or her and distinguishes them from everyone else. A hook is one of the earliest and simplest tools to help familiarize your reader with your character. Simply put, a hook is something the reader can hang their memory on, that helps them, especially in the early stages of your story, remember who that character is and what their place is in your world."

In my own writing, I have recently discovered that I can apply hooks to every aspect of my work. I am becoming convinced that each world, each fictional community, each character, each location, each chapter, each page in the book should have a hook. 

• World: What sets your world apart from every other world? What makes it different than our world? What makes is more wonderful? More horrible? More terrifying? More beautiful?
• Community: What sets this group of friends or co-conspirators apart from the norm? What brings them together into a cohesive unit? What makes this "group" something that your readers will want to belong to? What is the hook on which this community is based?
• Character: What is the most memorable thing about your character? What distinguishes him or her from every other character? Physically? Personality-wise? In background? Include a hook for each.
• Location: What is the most memorable thing about your setting? Your overall setting? Your scene settings? Include a hook for every place, and include things that your characters can interact with to "set" the mood and location in the reader's mind.
• Chapter: What happens in each chapter that is unique? What is the one-sentence take-away and how did you make it memorable?
• Page: Is there a detail of character, setting, scene, or community that is memorable and alive?

World-building is easier said than done. I think it is probably the most difficult thing to do. The artistry in it comes not from including overwhelming details, but from selecting the most telling details. In choosing the details that will best convey the hook to the reader, and then by artistically showing different facets of the hook to set it in the reader's mind.

Think of tapping into the power of myth as the structure of the story you are weaving, and use the hooks of your characters, settings, community, and so on as the threads that create a vivid and detailed tapestry. When you put the warp and weft all together, you will have something unique and enduring.

Every story is different, even when they are the same at heart. As Susan and I both have short stories in the SWEETER THAN TEA anthology that just came out this week, I will use that as an example. The prompt for that was to write stories in southern settings that make you want to prop your feet up, sip a cold glass of sweet iced tea, and lose yourself in a way of life that exists between the pages of How It Was and How It Might Have Been—just a little bit south of the long path home. The thirteen stories in the collection couldn't be more different though. And each has its own cast of memorable characters and a setting that's unique and vivid.

So you see, there is world-building even in the world of southern fiction. There is world-building in memorable fiction everywhere. Just find your hooks and use them to weave your story.

****

Susan here - I can't tell you what a thrill I get from seeing myself quoted in the same post as the great Joseph Campbell! :-)

Thanks so much for sharing with us, Martina.  And everybody, the few of you who haven't already, be sure to visit Martina's blog, follow her on Twitter, and definitely check out Sweeter Than Tea!

Martina's Bio - Martina Boone writes fantasy and magical realism for adults and young adults when she isn’t writing web site copy, and resides in Virginia with her family, a therapy dog, two black cats, and as much wildlife as she can coax into taking up residence in the yard. 

(Check Out JK Rowling's Newest Release -- Harry Potter and the Cursed Child here!)  
 

New Release, Guest Post, and Upcoming Workshop

Today I've got several updates and news items I want to share with you:

Sweeter Than Tea - BelleBooks' newest collection of Southern short stories has been released and includes my story "Running Raw."  The book is available on Kindle and will be coming soon in paperback and other formats.  Running Raw is the story of a prodigal daughter returning home to run a "milk-shine" business to save the family farm.

Guest blog post - In celebration of this new release, I guest posted yesterday on "The Devil's in the Detail" at Martina Boone's blog, Adventures in YA & Children's Publishing.  Martina also has a story in Sweeter Than Tea that you must read - Bringing Lula Home.  It's very touching story with great atmosphere involving old family secrets and an artist reclaiming her passion.  Martina will be guest blogging here on Thursday, so be sure to come back!

Ascendio 2 012 - I mentioned a while back that I will be presenting A Writer's Guide to Harry Potter at a large fan and writer's conference this summer in Orlando.  Now it is only 1 month away!  Seriously, all you writers out there, you need to check this conference out.  It's got a wonderful writing track with a slew of great agents and editors in attendance:

• Joanna Volpe (agent)
• Lindsay Ribar (agent & author)
• Carlie Webber (agent)
• Ben Schrank (publisher)
• Cecilia Tan (publisher & author)
• Omnific (publishing company)

And the following authors: Lev Grossman, Beth Revis, Libba Bray, Veronica Roth, Aimee Carter, Michelle Hodkin, Kaza Kingsley, Mark Oshiro,  Connie Neal

Be sure to come back Thursday for Martina's post, and watch out for more changes and updates coming soon.... :-)

Guest Post: Why A Small Press? by Alicia Rasley

I first met Alicia Rasley several years ago when I was in charge of programming at my local writing chapter and she graciously agreed to come and present a workshop.  I'd heard from so many chapter members who'd been fortunate enough to attend one of Alicia's popular workshops at RWA nationals how fabulous she was.  I learned a lot as well as enjoyed getting to know a writer with such insight who was also so down-to-earth.

Since then, I've followed Alicia's career through a mutual good friend and was thrilled when I saw that she had come on board with BelleBooks, the publisher of my short stories.  Belle (and its imprint BellBridge) is truly making a name for itself as an independent publisher, drawing in top-notch writers, like Alicia.  And so who better to blog about the advantages and disadvantages between a "Big 6" publisher and a smaller press than someone who has been published by both and has been involved in multiple aspects of the publishing industry from writer to instructor to freelance editor for over twenty years?

I know many of you are actively considering which path to pursue among the new possibilities growing stronger in today's publishing.  So, please join me in welcoming Alicia Rasley to the blog!

Why a Small Press?

My publishing career is so checkered, I call it a "herringbone." I've been published by major publishers and a couple small presses, and self-published too. Susan asked me to write about why I chose to go with a small press for my women's fiction novel, TheYear She Fell.

I got my first publication back in the Golden Era of romance publishing, when all the major NY publishers were starting romance lines and romance writers had print runs of 300K. (Not me, but others!) I never benefitted much from that wave as I wrote in a small niche genre (Regencies), but I stayed published by major pubs for more than a decade. I never made much money, but the prestige of major publication helped my teaching career, as nearly everyone was impressed to hear that I was a "Dell author." (Of course, I published only one book with Dell before they suddenly dropped their Regency line. The great thing about prestige is it can be based on singular and long-past events.)

But consolidation of the big publishers in the 90s led to the greater commodification of books, and the multi-nationals didn't seem very interested in marketing to niche readers anymore. Even with a top agent, I couldn't get back into the closed circle with a book I'd certainly considered commercial. Why? Because I'd been writing "small books," with print runs under 40K, the suddenly all-important "numbers" – how successful an author was at making lots of money for the publisher—meant editors had to send letters with high praise and that "Unfortunately" last paragraph. ("Unfortunately, with the market as it is, we can't take a chance on Alicia who hasn't the record of success we want.")  I knew the book was good, and I knew it would sell well if it got the chance. But it looked like I wasn't going to get a chance. Then someone suggested submitting the book to Belle Books, a small press that a friend of mine had started years ago with some friends.

Small Press, Big Advantages

For someone like me, who had mostly read big-press books, and had published only with "The Big Eight" (soon to become The Big Seven and then The Big Six), looking beyond NYC for publication was scary.  I mean, I'd heard about small presses, but thought they published only literary fiction and poetry, and regional publishers, but thought they published only local histories. Boy, did I get an education when I sold the book to Bell Bridge Books (the women's fiction imprint of Belle Books). I learned that small presses like BB can aim for niche readers because their lower overhead (no Manhattan office to rent!) means they don't have to sell as many copies to make a profit on a book.  I also learned that compared to the ocean-liner-sized major publishers, a small press is like a nimble cruiser, able to turn on a dime to take advantage of new technologies and techniques. So though my book came out initially in print, the publisher quickly realized that the rise of the Kindle and other e-readers would open up low-cost opportunities. So they published my book in several electronic formats, and while the sales were small for the print edition, the title caught on for Kindle readers.

The costs are lower, and the royalties much higher in e-format, and a small press like mine can experiment without much cost. For example, my publisher put the book up for free in Kindle format the week after Christmas 2010. I admit, I thought it was crazy to give away books. But it worked, generating many reviews and getting the book onto the top 10 list in the Kindle store. Even when the free period ended, customers still downloaded the book, only this time they paid for it.  In fact, for a brief moment (and I do mean a moment), my book was the #1 bestselling book on Amazon Kindle. Hey, it's not the NYTimes, but you better believe I now call myself a "bestselling author." For a Regency writer, used to sales in the lowest five figures, this was a heady experience. (And yes, I checked my ranking constantly, and suffered through every bad review too!) And when I got my first royalty check, well, it didn't pay for a new Lexus, but it was several times larger than any of my big-press book royalties.

So paradoxical as it seems, giving the book away was an effective way to sell the book. But I'd never encountered that method with a big press. They didn't even like to give the author many copies.

And small presses are more likely, I think, to explore opportunities for alternate revenues like foreign sales and subsidiary rights, because that way they can maximize income from their relatively short list of books. Just an example: the Harry Potter books were released both in the UK and the US by relatively small presses. Of course, these novels sold millions, but much of the revenue (JK Rowling is the first writer to become a billionaire) came from adroit dealing of film rights and other sub-rights. Of course, the big presses do try to sell film rights and the like, but very seldom for books in the midlist or below.

Trade-offs

There are, of course, limitations to the small press experience. The advances tend to be small because the companies are usually under-capitalized, using the profits from one book to fund the production of the next. The smaller presses can't afford to have marketing divisions that go out and sell the books to big accounts. (On the other hand, this means that the marketers don't get to interfere with editorial decisions as I kept running into with big publishers.) Small presses also don't have the clout to force booksellers to sell a "small" book in order to get enough copies of a "big" book like a Grisham or a Koontz.

There are always trade-offs in any decision, and going with a small press has meant giving up a few perks, especially the powerful influence created by the huge multi-national publishers. However, my decision was validated this Christmas, when my publisher once again did a marketing push for my book (now out for more than a year), and got The Year She Fell up onto the bestseller list again. This persistence was in great contrast to my experience with big publishers, where a book was pretty much up for sale for the release month, and never again. I'd gotten used to doing a frantic round of promotion that month, and then seeing the book taken from the store shelves and stripped to be sent back to the publisher.  Instead, here I am in awaiting a second sizeable January royalty check, because my small press can keep the book for sale literally for years.

So I think my own experience shows that there's no reason to confine our submissions to big New York publishers. Small presses might have the flexibility and resilience to keep up with the near-constant changes in the marketplace. However, because small presses don't have the name-recognition and long public histories of a Random House, I'd suggest doing some due diligence before signing that first contract.  Google the company name and check with the author-warning sites (like Preditors and Editors) to make sure there aren't a lot of author complaints (especially ones concerning unpaid royalties!).  Read the contract carefully and compare it with sample big-press contracts. Make sure that you're not expected to contribute any funds of your own. Ask about the company in your writer's groups and lists. Check the biographies of the company personnel to see if there's a good mix of editorial and business expertise.  Check their own website, and the sales pages of some of their books at Amazon or bn.com to see if the presentation is professional. Finally, talk through with the publisher what is planned for your book in terms of publication and marketing. These common-sense precautions will also help you get to know the publisher and get some ideas of how together you can make your book a success in a rapidly changing marketplace.

Has anyone else tried the small-press route? What's been your experience?

Alicia

 Bio:

 Alicia Rasley is a Rita-award winning author and nationally known teacher of writing workshops. She teaches composition and tutors students in two state universities. She grew up in the mountains of Southwest Virginia but now lives in the midwestern flat land. Her book The Year She Fell has been a Kindle fiction bestseller.

Her blog is at: www.edittorrent.blogspot.com, and her website is www.rasley.com. Her writing book, The Power of Point of View, is still available from Writer's Digest Books. All her books can be found on her Kindle page.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Susan here -- Thanks so much, Alicia, for sharing your years of experience and wisdom with us!


Alicia is willing to take questions, so please feel free to post in the comments.

Guest Post: J.K. Rowling's Writing Process in Her Own Words, part 2

Welcome to part 2 of Shelley Souza's fabulous compilation and analysis of J.K. Rowling's writing process from Jo's own words.  Shelley has scoured old interviews to bring together anything JKR has said regarding how she wrote her phenomenal series. Part 1 was posted on Tuesday, and if you haven't read that yet, you will definitely want to check it out as well.

Here, in part 2, Shelley delves more deeply into what Jo had to say regarding her choices of names, her use of myth and folklore, and how everything was created from the core of Harry's character.

So, once again, please welcome Shelley!

A Peek Into J.K. Rowling's Writing Process in Her Own Words, part 2

When a writer who is character driven (as Rowling is) involves herself in a long project, a large amount of the material that's generated, in the creation of the characters and their world, will never find its way into the books. As she mentions in the previous quotation,[18] amassing that much material was, in part, for her own pleasure.

Part of that pleasure for Rowling is in the naming of things:

I collect names. I've always collected names, so I've got notebooks full of them.[19]

Ideas come from all sorts of places and sometimes I don't realise where I got them. A friend from London recently asked me if I remembered when we first saw Hogwarts. I had no idea what she was talking about until she recalled the day we went to Kew Gardens and saw those lilies that were called Hogwarts. I'd seen them seven years before and they'd bubbled around in my memory. When Hogwarts occurred to me as a name for the school, I had no idea where it came from.[20]

Names are really crucial to me. Some of my characters have had eight or nine names before I hit the right one. And for some reason I just can't move on until I know I've called them the right thing - that's very fundamental to me.[21]

Sometimes invention gives out. I was writing the latest chapter of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince and I needed to come up with another name for another potion. I sat for ten minutes at the keyboard then I just typed “X”. I thought, ‘I’ll go back and fill that in later.’ Sometimes you really want to get on with the story. Sometimes names just come to you, which is a great feeling, but sometimes it is difficult and you have to batter your brain for a while. Sometimes it comes to you while you are washing up or on the loo or something. My husband is quite used to me saying, 'Wait!' then running upstairs and writing something down.[22]

(article continues below)


The conception of new words:

I love making up words. There are a few key words in the books that wizards know and muggles, as in us non-magic people, don't know. Well, muggle is an obvious example. Then there's quidditch. Quidditch is the wizarding sport. A journalist in Britain asked me...she said to me, 'Now, you obviously got the word quidditch from quiddity; meaning the essence of a thing, its proper nature.' And I was really, really tempted to say, 'Yes, you're quite right,' because it sounded so intellectual. But I had to tell her the truth, which was that I wanted a word that began with Q—on a total whim—and I filled about, I don't know, five pages of a notebook with different Q-words until I hit quidditch and I knew that was the perfect one.[23]

And twisting the repertoire of folklore and mythology into a new narrative, to fit her story:

I've taken horrible liberties with folklore and mythology, but I'm quite unashamed about that, because British folklore and British mythology is a totally bastard mythology. You know, we've been invaded by people, we've appropriated their gods, we've taken their mythical creatures, and we've soldered them all together to make, what I would say, is one of the richest folklores in the world, because it's so varied. So I feel no compunction about borrowing from that freely, but adding a few things of my own.[24]

The liberties Rowling has taken with words, mythologies and ideas of writers she admires (Dorothy L. Sayers’ belief that romance and mystery do not made good companions in bed, for example), are the building blocks of the wizarding world. For the reader they come to life in much the way Harry did for Rowling--with a sense of excitement and surprise.

You can always tell if it's a good idea because you get a physical response to it, you get this sort of big leap of excitement.[25]

This sense of excitement, I suspect, is also the gauge by which Rowling determined whether the internal logic of her characters and their plot was credible or not. Each new idea that gave her this "big leap of excitement" provided much needed inspiration to keep her on track, at a time when life circumstances were difficult and prospects bleak.[26]

When asked about the source of her books, Rowling says, "I get it all from remembering what it was like to be a kid. So everything Harry goes through, and all these feelings of being lost sometimes and confused, these are all things I remember really vividly.”[27]

Rowling’s answers to questions James Runcie poses, at the beginning of his documentary J.K. Rowling…A Day in the Life, show how her personal values have infused the world of Harry Potter, consciously and unconsciously:[28]

Runcie: What’s your favourite virtue?
Rowling: Courage.”
Runcie: What vice do you most despise?
Rowling: Bigotry.
Runcie: What are you most willing to forgive?
Rowling: Gluttony.
Runcie: What’s your most marked characteristic?
Rowling: I’m a trier.
Runcie: What are you most afraid of?
Rowling: Losing someone I love.
Runcie: What’s the quality you most like in a man?
Rowling: Morals.
Runcie: What’s the quality you most like in a woman?
Rowling: Generosity.
Runcie: What do you most value about your friends?
Rowling: Tolerance.
Runcie: What’s your principal defect?
Rowling: Short views.
Runcie: What’s your favourite occupation?
Rowling: Writing.
Runcie: What’s your dream of happiness?
Rowling. Happy family.

The plot came entirely from Harry. This statement, more than any Rowling has made about her process as a writer, reveals how she found the internal logic that holds the story together to create a plot that is loophole free.

He really is the whole story. The whole plot is contained in Harry Potter; his past, present and future—that is the story. Harry came to me first and everything radiated out from him. I gave him his parents, then his past, then Hogwarts, and the wizarding world got bigger and bigger. He was the starting point.[29]

In A Poetry Handbook, Mary Oliver writes:

The part of the psyche that works in concert with consciousness and supplies a necessary part of the poem—the heat of the star as opposed to the shape of a star, let us say—exists in a mysterious, unmapped zone: not unconscious, not subconscious, but cautious. It learns quickly what sort of courtship it is going to be. … If you are reliably there, it begins to show itself—soon it begins to arrive when you do. But if you are only there sometimes and are frequently late or inattentive, it will appear fleetingly, or it will not appear at all.

This is what I think Rowling meant when she spoke of finding herself at the moment she hit rock bottom, when she discovered she had a strong will, and more self-discipline than she had ever suspected, to finish the only work that mattered to her.[30] When, in her darkest hour, writing was all she had left to fall back on, Fortuna smiled, because Rowling had always turned up to write, even when it didn’t appear to count.

There’s so much to say about J.K. Rowling that has helped me in my life outside of writing. But perhaps I’ll end with the two things that struck me most when I was searching for my path as a writer. In talking with Oprah Winfrey, Rowling described herself as someone who had very little self-confidence in most things except her ability to tell a story. She also told Oprah that she had never felt as excited about an idea as when Harry and a school for wizards leapt unexpectedly into her mind, even though she had never considered writing for children.[31] The story, she says, chose her; she didn’t choose it.[32]

I think that the biggest lesson from the success of Harry Potter is that you need to try not to follow a trend. It's almost a cliché. You have to follow your heart. In Harry Potter, the wand chooses the wizard; and when the wand chooses you, you take it. You don't try to find which other books are selling, which ones are hot right now.[33] Arthur Levine

“How do you want to be remembered?” Runcie asks J.K. Rowling at the end of his documentary.

“As someone who did the best she could with the talent she had.”[34]

The creative process is a mysterious thing. It's not linear, and it has its own agenda. It's not there for us to use it—we are here to be used by it. In this sense, J.K. Rowling gave fully of herself—her intelligence, wit, morality, political beliefs, knowledge of literature, life experience, and abiding faith in the redemptive power of love—to the agenda of the creative impulse that chose her to write Harry Potter. Her conviction in the one thing she believed she could do—tell a story—and her belief in the story that chose her, is the reason fans of all ages have fallen in love with Jo Rowling the person, not just with J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books. Through learning about what inspired her process as a writer, I gained insight into trusting my own.

-- Shelley Souza


(Check Out JK Rowling's Newest Release -- Harry Potter and the Cursed Child here!)

BIO
Shelley Souza received a Master of Fine Arts in directing from U.C. Irvine and spent over two decades developing and staging new plays by established and emerging playwrights. She has authored hundreds of articles on new technology (which she loves) and ghostwritten four books of non-fiction for clients of an independent publisher. She is a member of the Authors Guild and SCBWI.

---

[18] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDhtJU7uLrQ
[19] http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/1999/1099-connectiontransc2.htm
[20] http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2001/1001-sydney-renton.htm
[21] http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/1999/1099-connectiontransc2.htm
[22] http://www.jkrowling.com/textonly/en/news_view.cfm?id=80
[23] http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/1999/1299-wamu-rehm.htm
[24] http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2005/1205-bbc-fry.html
[25] http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2005/0705-edinburgh-jones-official.html
[26] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6-6zaa4NI4
[27] http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/1999/0199-scotlandsunday-goring.html
[28] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6-6zaa4NI4
[29] http://www.jkrowling.com/textonly/en/news_view.cfm?id=80
[30] http://www.ted.com/talks/jk_rowling_the_fringe_benefits_of_failure.html
[31] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Y8TJqBtV8Y
[32] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn7nlfoMcwQ
[33] http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/1999/1013-nyt-levine.html
[34] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6-6zaa4NI4

Guest Post: J.K. Rowling's Writing Process in Her Own Words, part 1

                             (Read part 2 of Shelley's post here.)

I am delighted to welcome to the blog today published writer and theater director Shelley Souza.  I met Shelley recently through SavvyAuthors as a participant in my online class, A Writer's Guide to Harry Potter.  As always when I present this workshop, I learn more than I teach, and Shelley is a perfect example of why.  To help inform her own writing and understanding of craft, Shelley has delved deeply beneath the surface of Jo's work in order to understand the person and the process which produced Harry...thus she is a font of great insight.  Also, having been raised in Britain, Shelley helped me understand much of the cultural background of JKR's work that I had missed.

Shelley is as enthused about JK Rowling's craft as I am, and because she believes the best way to understand Jo's writing process is through her own words, Shelley's spent a huge amount of time researching through old interviews.  The post she has put together for us is a wonderful compilation of what JKR has said throughout the years in various interviews regarding her own writing process.

So now, please join me in welcoming Shelley!

A Peek Into J.K. Rowling's Writing Process in Her Own Words, part 1

As a writer, I am as much drawn to J.K. Rowling as I am to her books. The books came first but my interest in Rowling as a person and as a writer followed very quickly. As a reader, I would love to have read these books when I was young as much as I love reading them today. For one thing, they’re very British. And their inventiveness is legend. But as a writer, what inspires me more than Rowling’s imagination is her intuitive approach to the construction of the plot, and her self-confidence in her ability to tell a story.

I was born and raised in London (and attended boarding school). At first Harry Potter reminded me of one of my favourite series when I was about ten, the St. Clare books, by Enid Blyton. Both stories are set in a boarding school but that’s where the similarity between them ends. In Enid Blyton’s books, girls of a certain class in the forties and fifties attended boarding school. The goal was to train these girls to be morally good and practically efficient, in preparation for becoming a good wife and mother. (Not that I read them to learn how to be a good wife and mother! I liked the St. Clare books primarily for the classroom and midnight antics the girls got up to. And I also liked the teachers, in particular, the headmistress, who was always fair; unlike my teachers and headmistress in real life). Rowling has said the reason the Harry Potter books are set in a boarding school has nothing to do with the British class system.

In Britain, it's a big deal. In Britain, it's, 'Aha! So which boarding school did you go to?' I didn't go to boarding school. Harry Potter has to be set in a boarding school for reasons of plot. How would it be interesting if the characters couldn't get up at night and wander around? You're going to have them go to a day school and trot home, and then break into school every night?[1]

(article continues below)


Readers readily accept that Hogwarts is a boarding school because Rowling plants the idea in their imagination before they see the school for the first time, along with Harry and his friends. Students arrive at night, after travelling all day on a special train. On their arrival, Professor McGonagall tells the first years that their house will serve as their family during their time at the school. Hogwarts provides a safe environment in which to meet even the most dangerous wizard. In the early books, it would be implausible for Harry to encounter Voldemort away from the protected grounds of Hogwarts. He wouldn't know enough magic to defend himself successfully against the greatest wizard of dark magic in the last fifty years. When a reader accepts the author’s main setting without question, the author has succeeded in laying down the cornerstone of her world in the reader's mind. Rowling's cornerstone is Hogwarts. It stands for the learning of magic; and as such plays a pivotal role in the continuity of the wizarding world.

The credibility of Harry Potter’s world depends on strict rules that govern the internal logic.

I loathe books that have inconsistencies and leave questions unanswered. Loopholes bug the hell out of me. I hate getting to the end of a book and thinking, but if so and so had told Mr. Y. back in chapter three, it need never have happened. And so I try to be meticulous and make sure that everything operates according to laws, however odd, so that everyone understands exactly how and why.[2]

The five years I spent on Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone were spent constructing The Rules. I had to lay down all my parameters. The most important thing to decide when you're creating a fantasy world is what the characters CAN’T do. . . . You can tell with The Simpsons. It's a work of genius. You can tell that they've structured it in such a way that they're never at a loss for what their characters can and can't do. That's why they're so believable - even though they're little yellow people.[3]

My impression of J.K. Rowling is that what you see in Harry Potter is who she is, as a person. Not the magic (which is her imagination) but her logic, morality, themes, and sly sense of humour.

When asked why the wizarding world needs money, she answers:

There is legislation about what you can conjure and what you can't. Something that you conjure out of thin air will not last. This is a rule I set down for myself early on. I love these logical questions![4]

And on whether Harry Potter is a moral tale, she says:

I did not conceive it as a moral tale; the morality sprang naturally out of the story, a subtle but important difference. I think any book that sets out to teach or preach is likely to be hard going at times (though I can think of a couple of exceptions).[5]

One exception might be Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women.

I know I read Little Women when I was eight, because we moved house shortly afterwards, when I was nine. Naturally, I whole-heartedly identified with Jo March, she of the burning literary ambition and short temper.[6]

Or The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge.

The tone is perfect; a seamless mix of the fairy-tale and the real. It also has a plain heroine, which delighted me beyond words as a child, because I was a very plain little girl and I hadn’t met many literary heroines who weren’t breathtakingly pretty. The opening paragraphs of The Little White Horse have stayed with me all my life. Goudge says that there are three kinds of people in this world: Those who find consolation in food, those who find consolation in literature, and those who find consolation in personal adornment.[7]

Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (the tale of The Deathly Hallows was inspired by The Pardoner's Tale); and possibly, Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan.[8]

I think it is fair to say Dumbledore embodies Rowling’s ideal philosopher.[9]

Finally, though not exhaustively, Jessica Mitford’s Hons and Rebels possibly influenced Hermoine’s conscience to fight injustice, just as Mitford's life has influenced Rowling's political beliefs.

Jessica Mitford has been my heroine since I was 14 years old, when I overheard my formidable great-aunt discussing how Mitford had run away at the age of 19 to fight with the Reds in the Spanish Civil War. She was incurably and instinctively rebellious, brave, adventurous, funny and irreverent, she liked nothing better than a good fight, preferably against a pompous and hypocritical target.[10]

Rowling has said she writes for herself and that she writes for herself as a reader. So that even though she is not writing with a particular audience in mind—“I never really imagine a target audience when I'm writing. The ideas come first”[11]—she is writing with a particular reader in mind: herself. When Diane Rehm wanted to understand why children were drawn to the books, Rowling replied:

That's such a very hard question to answer, because...without being disingenuous, I wrote what I wanted to write. And I wrote the sort of thing that I knew I'd like to read *now* as an adult, and I knew that I would have liked to have read it when I was 11.[12]

I didn’t go into it thinking, this is what works; therefore, I will do that. But from letters I get and the reactions I get, particularly from children, it is the characters they care about most. Yes, they are very deeply amused by the magic going on, and so on. But they really deeply care about the characters, particularly the three central characters – Harry, Ron and Hermione.[13]

In a sense, I'm too close to it to be able to see whether there's, you know, a particular thing that draws children in, and in many ways I don't want to analyze it too much, because I'm scared that if I decide that it's factor X that is making children in these numbers like it, I might try a little too hard to put a lot of X in book 4 or 5. And I don't want to do that. I just want to write it the way I'm writing it at the moment, and enjoy writing it, and do it my way, without trying to, you know, work to a formula[14]

Rowling’s decision to introduce the thestrals near the beginning of book five, instead of at the end of book four, reveals her thought process as both reader and writer. Because Rowling writes the idea of a story for herself, first, rather than with a target audience in mind, how she thinks as a reader during the course of her writing greatly influences the choices she makes as a writer:

At the end of Goblet of Fire, we sent Harry home more depressed than he had ever been leaving Hogwarts. Now I knew that the thestrals were coming and I can prove that because they are in the book that I produced for Comic Relief, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. These unlucky black winged horses. However, if Harry had seen them then, and we hadn't explained them then, I thought that would be rather a cheat on the reader in that Harry suddenly sees these monsters but we don't go anywhere with them. So to explain to myself, I said, you had to have seen the death and allowed it to sink in a little bit, before, slowly, these creatures became solid in front of you. So that's how I am going to sneak past that one.[15]

Her compelling cast of characters came to life in her imagination because she never faltered in her belief that Harry Potter was the story she was meant to write.

It took me five years to work out this very long plot. On that train, I came up with lots of the characters you meet at the school. Loads and loads of detail, but not really the narrative. It’s as though, subconsciously, for years, I had been preparing for writing Harry Potter.[16]

During those five years this mass of material was generated, some of which will never find its way into the books, will never need to be in the books. It's just stuff I need to know, for my own pleasure—partly for my own pleasure and partly because I like reading a book where I have a sense that the author knows everything. They might not be telling me everything but you have that confidence that the author really knows everything.[17]

At first glance it appears that there isn't much interpretative thought appended to the quotes I selected. I deliberately structured the post to comprise mainly of Rowling's words, not my interpretation of them, because I learned so much about my process as a writer, simply by reading what Rowling had to say about hers.

-- Shelley Souza

(Read part 2 of Shelley's post here.)

(Check Out JK Rowling's Newest Release -- Harry Potter and the Cursed Child here!) 

**^**

Susan here -- I can't thank Shelley enough for wading through all these interviews and organizing a wonderful peek into Jo's writing process.  Please be sure to join us Thursday for the second half of Shelley's post.  And in the meanwhile, you can get to know Shelley better through her Tumblr blog!

Bio:

Shelley Souza received a Master of Fine Arts in directing from U.C. Irvine and spent over two decades developing and staging new plays by established and emerging playwrights. She has authored hundreds of articles on new technology (which she loves) and ghostwritten four books of non-fiction for clients of an independent publisher. She is a member of the Authors Guild and SCBWI.

---

[1] http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2001/0101-oprah.html

[2] http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2001/1001-sydney-renton.htm

[3] http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2000/0700-swns-alfie.htm

[4] http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2000/0700-swns-alfie.htm

[5] http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2004/0304-wbd.htm

[6] http://www.harrypotterfans.com/2011/06/j-k-rowling-chats-about-hidden-talents-and-favorite-books/

[7] http://www.harrypotterfans.com/2011/06/j-k-rowling-chats-about-hidden-talents-and-favorite-books/

[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter_influences_and_analogues

[9] http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2003/0302-newsround-mzimba.htm

[10] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter_influences_and_analogues

[11] http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/1999/0099-amazon-staff.htm

[12] http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/1999/1299-wamu-rehm.htm

[13] http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2000/0700-bloomsbury-fry.html

[14] http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/1999/1299-wamu-rehm.htm

[15] http://www.mugglenet.com/jkr-royalalbert.shtml

[16] http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2001/0101-villarum-matsuda.htm

[17] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDhtJU7uLrQ