The Best of the Last

Updated at bottom with a hint from JK Rowling regarding upcoming BOOKS (Yes, that's plural)!

7-7-11: A magical number for the day that brought us the premiere for the last Harry Potter movie.  Along with thousands of other viewers from around the world, I watched the livestream from Trafalgar Square via a feed at @JKRfan.

Below are some of the highlights with a few edits here and there to make the subject clearer, but otherwise produced with the excitement of the live stream on Twitter. The tweets without a Twittername at the beginning are mine, @HP4Writers:

***^***

The Harry Potter brand is worth more than 15 billion pounds.

@HogwartsRadio: One of the fans waiting has a sign that says, "Can't wait for Pottermore."

@HogwartsRadio: Rupert on what memory he'll take with him: "I think it might be this." Looks around at the crowd and they cheer.

Julie Waters suffered "wand arm" from filming THAT scene we most want to see with Bellatrix.

"Are you alright, Freddy?" SOB! (From Oliver Phelps, on his last line).

"The brilliance of Jo's work is in the details." - Steve Kloves

@HogwartsRadio: Emma Watson: "She decided to follow her heart in the end. Instead of her head." (on Hermione)

Rowling - pronounced like "bowling" with an "R"! Get it right! (the announcers keep mispronouncing her name!)

"wand arm", "wand blisters" - learning a whole new vocabulary!

@HogwartsRadio: Helena Bohnam Carter: "It's slightly worrying how many of you people love her. She's bonkers." And the crowd cheers!

They're chanting Snape!

Snape, Snape, Severus Snape!

@xtinaluvspink: Dumbledore! :D RT @HP4Writers: Snape, Snape, Severus Snape!

@nadhiralmighty: Ron.. Ron.. Ron Weasley! ;) RT @Mhaey: Dumbledore! RT @HP4Writers: Snape, Snape, Severus Snape!

Will JK Rowling Revisit Harry's World?

Could JK Rowling be writing another Harry Potter story?

I was initially very dubious of any claims that JKR would revisit Harry's world.  She seemed rather firm at the end of Deathly Hallows that she would not return.  That's what the whole Epilogue was about:  Here's the whole clan 19 years later because this story is final.  Done.

Over a couple of weeks ago, when JKR's interview with Oprah aired, the Internet buzzed with the possibility that she would do another Harry Potter book.  All the hoopla was based on the following response to Oprah's prompt, "But you know what happens ever after":

Yeah, I do.  I couldn't stop...They're all in my head still...I could definitely write an eighth, ninth, tenth.  I could easily...I'm not going to say I won't...I feel I am done, but you never know. 

I listened to this, though, and thought that it was nothing different than what she'd said before.  She wouldn't discount future HP books because she didn't want to limit her possibilities, but she wasn't planning on writing another one either.

However, after today's broadcast from the Hans Christian Andersen Award, I'm having second thoughts.  In her speech before the audience in Odense, Denmark, JKR said:

I love my own characters so much that leaving them all behind after seventeen years was a kind of bereavement.  The fact that so many people enjoyed the world that I made stuns me every day.  And yet miraculously, it still feels like my own private kingdom where I can't help strolling occasionally just to see what my surviving characters are up to.

Question: Is "strolling occasionally" a JKR euphemism for "writing a new story"?

When you put today's remarks together with what she said just a couple of short weeks ago on Oprah, and this coming from a writer who is a master at subtext and leading her reader's on a trail-of-clues mystery, you have a strong hint that something Harry Potter related might truly be in the works!

Honestly, I don't think she's busy writing another HP story at the moment.  I think she's busy at work on that political fairy-tale for children...whatever that may be.  But I would not be at all surprised to find out that she's writing snippets here and there as ideas occur to her and collecting plot notes and character sketches.

And if she is, I doubt very seriously that she would revisit the Harry Potter story with Harry as the main character.  I think his Hero's Journey was very well defined and over.  However, that she would revisit the wizarding world with another character is definitely a possibility--as she teases us with her "surviving characters" quote.

Best of JK Rowling on Oprah

So, JK Rowling was on Oprah today, and many of us came together to enjoy a TweetParty as we viewed. Below are some of the best snippets (in my POV) from the show.

Enjoy!

First off, from what I heard, JK Rowling did NOT say anything differently than what I've heard before regarding whether she'd write another Harry Potter novel. She basically said she wouldn't rule it out, not that she definitely would.

12 publishers rejected The Sorcerer's/Philosopher's Stone. The 13th ended up being the lucky one.

"JK Rowling is the first self-made billionaire author in history, selling more than 400 million books, captivating readers in 69 languages and 200 countries around the world.  Deathly Hallows is the fastest selling book of all time."

The rest below are quotes from JK Rowling:

Regarding PS/SS: The difficult thing's going to be to get published.  If it's published, it will be huge.

I was not the world's most secure person... And yet in this one thing in my life, I believed. I can tell a story.

I'm very frustrated by fear of imagination. I don't think that's healthy. (caught by http://twitter.com/z00here)

I'm not pushing any belief system here, although there is a lot of Christian imagery in the books...and certainly in Hallows.

In magic man has to rely on himself...That's the appeal of magic...that we ourselves have power and we can shape our world.

If you've ever been there, you will never ever take for granted that you don't need to worry. (on being poor)

I had no one near me...who could in any way help me...with the really crazy stuff...Like what do you do when the press is searching your bins.

Sometimes I know what I believe because of what I've written.

The books wouldn't be what they are if [her mother] hadn't died...Her death is on virtually every other page...At least half of Harry's journey is a journey to deal with death...I loved her and she died. That's why they are what they are. (caught by http://twitter.com/janflora)

And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

It is impossible to live without failing at something.  Unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all.

I've met extraordinary people through Harry Potter and not one of them didn't have their failure.

It's the ability to use failure that often leads to the greatest success. (caught by http://twitter.com/jkrfan)

JK Rowling on power of love & 9-11:  Because those last phone calls were all about..."I love you." What's more powerful than that?


About happiness, referring to Dumbledore and Mirror of Erised:  The happiest man alive would look in the mirror and see himself exactly as he is. So, I would have to say that I'm pretty close.

You could tie my hands to my sides, I suppose. But I have to write.

I did it. I'm really proud that I did it...But this is a new phase. (on leaving behind Harry Potter)

She said a girl in her early 20's apparated out of the pavement and said "You are my childhood." (caught by http://twitter.com/Katchin05)

Photo credit

Quotes on Writing from JK Rowling

It seems to me that JK Rowling reveals little in public regarding her writing process. I've never heard of her giving a workshop or opening up extensively on how she crafts her amazing stories. So, I always love it when I find anything she has shared throughout the years.

Here are a few I've just come across from a great site:
Harry Potter's Realm of Wizardry, one of the oldest fansites online.

• Whatever job I had, I was always writing like crazy. All I ever liked about offices was being able to type up stories on the computer when no one was looking. I was never paying much attention in meetings because I was usually scribbling bits of my latest stories in the margins of the pad or thinking up names for my characters. This is a problem when you're supposed to be taking minutes of the meeting.
  
  
• I have to write the story I want to write. I never wrote them with a focus group of 8-year-olds in mind. I have to continue telling the story the way I want to tell it.
  
  
• I've only suffered writer's block badly once, and that was during the writing of Chamber of Secrets. I had my first burst of publicity about the first book and it paralysed me. I was scared the second book wouldn't measure up, but I got through it!
  (chat, October 2000)
  
  
• I write what amuses me. It's totally for myself. I never in my wildest dreams expected this popularity. There's no formula.
  
  
• Sometimes the ideas just come to me. Other times I have to sweat and almost bleed to make ideas come. It's a mysterious process, but I hope I never find out exactly how it works. I like a mystery, as you may have noticed.
  
  
• I've no idea where ideas come from and I hope I never find out, it would spoil the excitement for me if it turned out I just have a funny little wrinkle on the surface of my brain which makes me think about invisible train platforms. (1999 Amazon.com chat)
  
  
• I can write anywhere. I made up the names of the characters on a sick bag while I was on an airplane. I told this to a group of kids and a boy said, "Ah, no, that's disgusting." And I said, "Well, I hadn't used the sick bag."
  
  
• During the first five years that I was writing the series, I made plans and wrote small pieces of all the books. I concentrate on one book at a time, though occasionally I will get an idea for a future book and scribble it down for future reference. (chat, October 2000)
  
  
  

Gathering Your Wits

Remember back in high school literature class when your teacher would point out all the analogies, metaphors, themes, and innuendo in the classics you were forced to read? If you were like me, you probably rolled your eyes and asked how she could be sure the writer intended all that crap.

I've presented my workshop, A Writer's Guide to Harry Potter, numerous times at both writer and fan conferences, and invariably I get this question from one of the participants. My answer is always "yes," ... probably.

Of course, fans and analysts can get carried away and see subtext where JKR did not intend. But the fact is that Ms. Rowling deliberately played a game with her readers, planting clues and real-life analogies for her witted fans. She's openly acknowledged this in interviews. "I want you to be able to guess if you’ve got your wits about you."

Where we fanatics tend to get off track and see more than is intended by JKR is truly due to the author's own masterly craft. JKR dipped her quill into a very deep mythological well, one from which many other storytellers throughout time have dipped into also. Thus, it's only natural that alert readers can weave a web of connections between all these foretold stories and JKR's Potter, even if the author did not intend the links herself.



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